Obama’s long enemies list grows ever longer
And the health insurance companies are most definitely on it.
I can’t recall this level of invective from any American president in my lifetime. But that seems to be Obama’s specialty. Everybody’s a liar except him.
[NOTE: Here’s the President’s address.]
Misuse of PotUS powers to get at their enemies.
A tactic only a Democrat could use.
You don’t recall Nixon?
george salamon: show me the quotes from Nixon, and compare and contrast the words in their addresses to the nation. I obviously recall Nixon very well, as you can tell from the title of this post.
His strongest language and most damning accusations are always directed toward Americans. But America’s real enemies get treated with respect, credulity and, in Krauthammer’s words, “national self-denigration.”
Obama continues to act like a partisan Democrat campaigning for office rather than the President of the United States of America. His campaign website mybarackobama.com is still actively working to support his agenda. I found this very disturbing: Barack Obama’s Anti-Semitic Website.
My intelligence and my sense of right and wrong are insulted nearly every day by this president and his administration.
Not since Nixon have I seen a president get this nasty and this personal. And even Nixon did not scare me as much as Obama.
BTW, it is a real joke to hear Obama call insurance companies liars, just look at the people he surrounds himself with.
I was anti-Nixon while he was President. But with the passage of time and the opening of eyes my view has changed. I am now painfully aware of what putty I was in the hands of the NYT and the Democratic establishment of the time.
It’s not unreasonable for a Nixon, or any major pol, to have an enemies list of individuals. But Obama has a gazillion folks on his, lumped into cohorts and classes to keep his list short enough for his overtaxed brain to remember: Wall St., insurance companies, Big Pharma, Big Oil, White males, etc.
What’s with the image on the video before you click to play it. Who at the White House thought Obama looking down his nose was a good look. I guess it fits the theme. He certainly doesn’t look Presidential, more like an old crone whose thoroughly disapproves of that rock’n roll.
You know, in my experience, those with some power who become petty, vindictive and threatening are usually the ones who sense their position is slipping or who fear their power is ephemeral. Unfortunately, they are very dangerous as they thrash about in the hopes of hiding their weakness.
You may not like the way he describes the insurance industry, but when he’s right, he’s right.
“The Jews are irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards.” (cassette #876, July 1971)
“But Bob,generally speaking, you can’t trust the bastards. they turn on you.” New tapes, in WaPost, Oct.9, 1999
Golly, the Nixon tapes are full of such stuff–on Jews, women, civilians in Cambodia (see his remarks to Henry K) etc etc
I am no fan of Obama, but compared to the Tricky
One, he’s a novice in the invective contest.
Would that be public invective George? Because that is what I believe Neo was talking about.
(Who knows what Barack & Michelle say about jews themselves in private)
I would love to hear some of Obama’s private conversations with other officials in his Administration.
Okay, let’s put the evidence on the table and actually quote the speech:
“The history is clear: for decades rising health care costs have unleashed havoc on families, businesses, and the economy. And for decades, whenever we have tried to reform the system, the insurance companies have done everything in their considerable power to stop us.”
Now, can you deny this, neoneocon? Or do you merely find it convenient to ignore it?
“In the past decade, premiums have doubled. Over the past few years, total out of pocket costs for people with insurance rose by a third.”
Is this false, neoneocon? Can you show that the President’s figures are incorrect? Can you argue that this is not a significant problem for us all?
“A new report for the Business Roundtable — a non-partisan group that represents the CEOs of major companies — found that without significant reform, health care costs for these employers and their employees will well more than double again over the next decade.The cost per person for health insurance will rise by almost $18,000.”
Doesn’t this suggest that there is a serious problem ahead if we do nothing? Is there something incorrect in the conclusions of this report? Have you even read it?
“They’ll claim that premiums will go up under reform; but they know that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that reforms will lower premiums in a new insurance exchange while offering consumer protections that will limit out-of-pocket costs and prevent discrimination based on pre-existing conditions.”
Have you read this CBO report? Are it’s conclusions incorrect?
Do you have a serious reason to oppose the bill if its conclusions are correct?
Now I’m sure that all you really want to talk about is Obama and not the evidence for or against the proposal. There is little to suggest in any of your posts that I have read that you are serious about examining the actual state of health insurance coverage in America. Not “what might happen if the wrong thing is done”, but “what is actually happening now”.
Of course, were you to do this honestly and objectively, you would be forced to suggest a serious remedy. And suggesting a serious remedy, a better alternative to what has been brought forward, is what you clearly wish to avoid doing at all costs.
But perhaps I have missed it. If so, can you point me toward any of your posts which do any of this? I will certainly read them if you do.
Not “what might happen if the wrong thing is done”, but “what is actually happening now”.
What is happening right now is that 84% of people are happy with their healthcare and coverage. I’m happy with mine. If that rat-bastard in the Whitehouse screws up my insurance that I like, I’m going to be pissed off.
I like my coverage. I don’t want anyone to screw with it. That’s what’s happening right now.
“They’ll claim that premiums will go up under reform; but they know that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that reforms will lower premiums in a new insurance exchange while offering consumer protections that will limit out-of-pocket costs and prevent discrimination based on pre-existing conditions.”
Look, it’s this simple:
If they don’t discriminate against pre-existing conditions, I’m not going to sign up and pay until I get sick and I will drop coverage once I am well. Everybody will do that. What will that do to the program?
Joseph Marshall
the fact that the US has some difficulties with health care does not mean that one must support the health care proposal being bandied about by the democrats. here in canada it’s not a bowl of cherries.our limosine liberals get their health care in the US,all the while praising government paid health care.what I find disturbing is the panic to pass some kind of legislation, something like this should be debated openly and in good time.this big push smells of profound dishonesty. By the way , if the bill passes, where will your limosine liberals go for health care? It sure won’t be on a waiting list with the rest of the population.
Health insurance premiums only go up because the cost of medical care goes up. Duh.
Gray is completely correct about the pre-ex; it’s been tried before and the scenario he posits was the result…
As for rising premiums under “reform”, one only has to look to Massachusetts…
Terrye: “Not since Nixon have I seen a president get this nasty and this personal. And even Nixon did not scare me as much as Obama.”
Are you *sure* Nixon was “nasty?” Might it be that there was some (“liberal”) media-payback going on?
a fool: “… Now, can you deny this, neoneocon? Or do you merely find it convenient to ignore it?”
You’re a fool. What you’re bitching about is the cultural expectation that *adults* pay their own way in life.
a fool: “… Of course, were you to do this honestly and objectively, you would be forced to suggest a serious remedy. …”
You’re a dishonest fool (that’s a redundancy, of course): you don’t *want* “a remedy” … you want to live off the efforts of everyone else; you want to turn everyone else into your slaves.
Of course in early summer Obama and the Democrats were pushing for health care reform, not health care insurance reform. Since they couldn’t gain enough traction by demonizing physicians, they retrained their sites on the insurers. Their strategy never rises to the level of actaully attempting to use honest logic, just finding the best target to attempt to marginalize (that, and tossing white labcoats to a bunch of people, some of whom actually were physicians, for some photo-propaganda).
∅bama’s crap statements in the transcript:
1) Of course, like clockwork, we’ve seen folks on cable television who know better, waving these industry-funded studies in the air.
2) It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s bogus. And it’s all too familiar. Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies
3) But what I will not abide are those who would bend the truth — or break it — to score political points and stop our progress as a country
I submit to you ∅bama that your speechwriter is weak, lazy and uneducated.
Those sentences are so unpresidential and you should fire that person immediately.
A very caring and loving American interested in progress and moving America forward,
Baklava
∅bama said, “Just this week, the Senate Finance Committee approved a reform proposal that has both Democratic and Republican support”
Olympia Snowe, you allowedg the President to say that.
Costs are high.
The reason is NOT because of the ‘evil’ insurance companies.
The reason is many fold. Americans demand more, malpractice lawsuits, technology, and GOVERNMENT.
Please look at Massachussetts and see the costs are through the roof. We don’t need that system.
We need to scale government control back. 1 of every 2 dollars in health care is spent by the government. This needs to stop.
Just like our universities which have become UNAFFORDABLE for the middle class in America it is due to liberalism and big government. Even in the midst of this recession universities have been raising tuition. They do not know what the market will bear any more.
As Ronald Reagan said, “Government is the problem”.
Olympia and ∅bama, you may have noble intentions – but the results of your actions will be more misery and more deaths. If you just want to DISMISS them because they are funded by people you disagree with then you are the lazy one.
Everybody’s a liar except him.
Which is one of the tells for clinical narcissism.
the insurance companies have done everything in their considerable power to stop us
What is the exact nature of the dealings between Obama and the insurance companies. Did he take them aside and tell them that they’d better sit at the table or they’d be on the menu? Because that’s what he did with PhRMA. Is it not likely that he did that with the other stakeholders?
What exactly have the insurance companies done to oppose Obamacare? Because the Tea Parties and the petitions were not funded by them, despite what you’ve heard.
Just like our universities which have become UNAFFORDABLE for the middle class in America it is due to liberalism and big government.
Actually, skyrocketing tuition is caused by having a third party pay for it. No matter how high tuition is, you can get a loan for it. So universities just keep raising the price. Because they can.
Which is also why health-care costs are rising: we have a third party pay for it, so the essential transaction between seller and buyer is distorted and prices rise where they should go down.
But what I will not abide are those who would bend the truth — or break it — to score political points and stop our progress as a country.
Obama cannot accept that opponents of Obamacare could possibly have legitimate concerns. He is so absorbed in his narcissistic self-righteousness that those who are thwarting his glorious reforms cannot be other than horrible people doing horrible things for horrible reasons.
Obama is not operating under the same assumptions that most of us use. The sky is off-blue in his world, and if you disagree, you’re just being contrary.
george salamon: I am speaking of public discourse, and I made that fact crystal clear. What Nixon said in private (and what Obama says in private, which we are unaware of since we have no Obama tapes) is not even remotely the issue.
Either of them can cuss out anyone they want in private; although that says a great deal about what they think, it says nothing about how they raise or lower the level of public discourse.
In my post, I was referring to a public address to the nation that Obama had just made when I wrote “this level of invective” to refer to what he’s saying. And then, in my reply to your question about Nixon, I made an explicit and pointed reference to public address [emphasis added] when I said: “show me the quotes from Nixon, and compare and contrast the words in their addresses to the nation.”
I think you would do well to read more carefully.
Neo, that’s going to leave a bruise….:)
When you hate make sure your hate is politically correct hate
Joseph Marshall Says:
The bottom line is this is not meant to ‘fix’ the insurance system. It’s meant to replace it with public insurance… which will have its own set of problems. Also, some of the ‘problems’ with private insurance are not easy fixes / no brainers and/or the proponents of change leave a lot of details out. Like, yes, we pay more but it’s because… maybe we get more than people in other western countries… and/or we can’t pay less and keep the current level of service… We could go over it point by point but that would be better done on a forum rather than blog comment system. But in the end, I don’t give a whatever about Obama, but I don’t want my private insurance taken from me and he seems hell bent on taking it.
Isn’t it amazing what a little reference to some real evidence will do? Not, of course, that most here are likely to actually read anything that describes the problem instead of attacking the attempt to fix it–that would be asking too much. But the reminder that they have not done so provokes the same excess combined with the same ineffectiveness that brought them down a year ago.
And that’s just fine.
So tell us, Joe, what are you going to do?
Let’s see, if you don’t have health insurance, you’ll be taxed. But if you’ve got too good a health plan, you’ll be taxed. We’ve got to have more preventive care, that will lower health care costs. But if doctors give too many tests, they’ll be penalized.
Drug companies are making too much money, so will cut their profits. So, they won’t have the billions they spend on research. Who needs that swine flu vaccine, anyway? In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, Joe, Glaxo spent $2.44 billion (that’s billion with a “b”) on the swine flu vaccine alone. Now where in the world did that money come from? You’re right, Joe, it grew on trees!
Hip replacement? You’re over 73, pal, forget it! Kidney dialysis? You’re over 55, you lose! MRIs? Helicopter ambulances? You don’t need ’em. So, somebody dies from a bump on the head at a ski resort, too bad — greatest good for the greatest number, right, Joe?
Mediocre health care for all, that’s the answer!
Sorry, Joe, I ain’t buying.
Joseph Marshall Says:
“Isn’t it amazing what a little reference to some real evidence will do?”
Give it a rest Joseph. Your main point of fact is the new CBO report and most of us have just not had the time to get to it yet… also, we are getting fatigued debunking the democrat’s plans. Every two weeks they come out with a new argument. By the time we’ve dug in deep enough to see it is bs they’ve come out with the new one…
Early reports about the CBO report were it had sets of assumptions that might not be realistic. Do you want to stake your credibility on it? Oh wait, you have…
> the attempt to fix it
Fix it? Well I suppose it depends on the meaning of “fix”…
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How come that whenever I think of exploding healthcare costs, Michelle’s salary pops into my head?
Joseph Marshall, you haven’t adduced any evidence. You have quoted some rhetoric that contains a very sloppy political argument and a description about a report about conclusions based on projections based on analysis and assumptions about which you know nothing. None of this qualifies as evidence.
If there is some evidence that we should be evaluating, please bring our attention to it.
The CBO’s assumptions and analysis will be examined. If the CBO’s assumptions turn out to be faulty, will you agree that your conclusions based on their assumptions and analysis, and Obama’s, are full of it?
By the way Neo, I hate to show my age, and I can’t say that the 8 months when I was alive while he was President were very politically engaged, but I did read somewhere later that Harry Truman was a very blunt fellow, too.
I’m not overwhelmingly impressed when people get up on their high horse about such things undermining the “dignity” of office. Obama has plenty of dignity when the occasion calls for it. This one doesn’t.
Having read so many things in the past several months about health care that conservatives have simply made up out of thin air–and then have proceeded to convince themselves, through the process of blogging linkfest, that they are true–I also have a low opinion of their capacity to tell who is lying and who isn’t.
While I have no fatal objection to a confederacy of dunces demanding to be addressed by a thickly stuffed shirt who uses “spokespersons” to distribute the poison against his political adversaries in deep background briefings, intimate television interviews, and speeches made abroad, I see no reason to join the confederacy myself.
Besides which, having endured the inane stuffed shirt with the poisonous spokespersons for eight long years, I find a President who speaks his own mind in his own addresses quite refreshing.
Joseph Marshall, it is bad business to rail against a “confederacy of dunces” when you can’t seem to master the basics of making a convincing argument. Your rhetoric is a content-free zone. You have read what lies made up out of thin air? Where? And then to use these conclusions to impeach the judgment of people who don’t necessarily have anything to do with it, assuming that these offenses exist in the first place? Why should anyone put up with that? You wouldn’t, if the show were on the other foot.
And who was the stuffed shirt for “eight long years,” and who was spreading the poison?
You aren’t making any case at all. It is a terrible thing to have reached your age without learning anything.
s/b “shoe” not “show”
Invective. Good choice. While Nixon’s private Mel Gibson moments cannot be defended they reflect a character weakness, not a level of “invective”.
“Invective” meaning something spoken or written that is intended to cast opprobrium, censure, or reproach on another”.
Obama’s propoganda is clearly intended to publicly diminish and censure any valid political opposition.
Contrary to Mr. Salamon’s suggestion, there is no evidence for any such intent from Nixon against any group much less Jews or women.
This is why Obama’s style of leadership is so disturbing to any of us who have an appreciation for over two-hundred years of American Executive precedent.
Obama’s presidency is truly transformational – it have transformed the etiquette of Presidential domestic discourse into that of a third-world Leftist state.
The CBO’s assumptions and analysis will be examined. If the CBO’s assumptions turn out to be faulty, will you agree that your conclusions based on their assumptions and analysis, and Obama’s, are full of it?
Examined by whom? It certainly hasn’t been examined by neoneocon, which is what I was pointing out. Any analysis might be flawed, inadequate or biased, and insofar as my views, or Obama’s views, are influenced by it, those views might be in error.
Okay. And your point is?
My point is that this post [as most on this blog] is not about the examination of a public problem and making a real case for trying to solve it in any particular way. Nor is it even a straightforward denial that any such problem exists and reasons why we should not be deceived into believing it does.
It is merely one of an endless series of tirades against a political enemy who has managed to get himself elected and who is doing fairly well at the moment furthering the agenda of those who voted for him.
Now I like a good tirade myself, just like I used to like a good strong dry martini. But when you want one for breakfast, lunch, and dinner you have a problem. An alcohol problem.
Conservatives have had a political invective problem for some years now.
The reason is NOT because of the ‘evil’ insurance companies.
***
Joseph Marshall, you haven’t adduced any evidence.
You want evidence of how this industry acts when it’s not regulated (and contrary to popular belief it isn’t). I’ve gone to my blog and marked pertinent posts with the “insurance company behavior” tag so they can all be viewed at together. Here is some evidence.
Those above who say how happy they are with their current private insurance, if it’s employment based woe be unto you if you ever need to contest a self-serving bottom-line driven decision by your insurer to deny you care. You’ll find out you really don’t have “insurance” at all.
That said I will give it a rest as was requested of someone else above. If you want to believe this industry is composed of benign do-gooders then so be it. They are the problem and some good stringent regulation (and the removal of their absurd immunity from liability for fraud and wrongful death) would go a long way. Not that that’s on the table right now, so due to that issue I am not happy with the current proposals either.
Richard Johnston, how do you know that if the insurance industry IS regulated, those who in charge of regulating will be regulating it in consumer’s favor? How many competent government employees – in ANY agency – you met? What, do you think, is percentage of agencies that are not redundant in their duties and purpose?
I’ll tell you this (and that’s not my personal anecdote, since it’s a wide-spread fact of life which anyone can check at first-floor directory of their local courthouse):
when designing a courthouse on a County level (let alone – State or Federal), an architect-planner is faced with necessity of housing 27 to 35 local government and quasi-government agencies and advocacy groups; besides functionally necessary Courts, Court Officers, PD, DA and Dept. of Correction guys there are inventively named “public defenders”, “community advocates”, “community rehabilitation groups”, “mediation authorities”, etc, etc. Would you say these people (who are supposed to be housed in publicly funded and publicly maintained building) are effective? Do they always act in interests of their clients? Right – they have NO clients. They are government-paid paper pushers, in charge of somebody’s life and freedom. Would you like them to be in charge of y
our health, too?
I don’t.
Why is it, when there is a set of faults with a system, some people have an urge to “do something”, w/o analyzing the consequences of these actions? What if the measures the Left (yes, I equate Democrats and the Left; they did everything to convince me) advocate will make the matters worse ? And they will do just that – a lot of logical, common sense arguments are available for unbiased observer.
If the insurance linked to employer denies care or some such problem – why insist to exacerbate it? Why not separate employer and insurance? Let people shop for their coverage – and change insurers if they are dissatisfied with them. This, at least, will be less costly than building up structure of government controllers on top of controllers.
Joseph Marshall, neo isn’t required to examine the CBO analysis to make her point, which is about the rhetoric of invective and accusing everyone else of arguing in bad faith.
By contrast, you need to endorse the CBO’s analysis before you can insist that neo address it. If it’s not right, or if it’s only one point of view, it can’t validate Obama’s statements or discredit his critics. The Times piece shows the White House attacking competing studies, which underscores that there are almost always competing studies supporting each side of major controversies.
My point is that the existence of the CBO study isn’t a trump card for Obama or for you. Without knowing what’s in it in detail, we can’t know how much weight to place on its conclusions, and we certainly don’t need to accept Obama’s description at face value.
Richard Johnston, your link doesn’t work. As far as I know, the insurance industry is regulated in every state. It may be badly regulated and there may be inadequate safeguards for policyholders, but that is a separate matter. It may also have incompetent regulators, but surely that isn’t an argument in favor of turning administration of the policies over to the states or the Federal government.
Sotrry ’bout the bad link (I wish there was a preview function for comments here). Try this.
States do regulate insurance to some degree, but the federal law which applies to employment-based insurance guts any meaningful regulation and in particular removes any meaningful consequence for bad behavior from insurance companies. it is hard ot believe for many but it is no exaggeration to say they enjoy immunity — absolute immunity — from liability for fraud and .
I would love to see a separation of health insurance form employment; that would require insurers to behave lawfully and there’d be consequences if they didn’t. Please don;t take my comments as an endorsement of the current proposals, because the uniformly fail to address this problem, which is the single biggest problem we have with regard to health care and insurance company abuse.
that should have said immunity from liability for fraud and wrongful death.
Can’t type today I guess.
Richard Johnston, I see this area is one where you have expertise and longstanding interest.
We can stipulate that some insurance companies have behaved badly. We can also stipulate that insurance companies have acted prudently and legally in ways that had substantial negative effects for some policy-holders. We can stipulate that ERISA could have been crafted in a way that had unintended consequences. We can stipulate that some of the people crafting ERISA might have intended those consequences. We can stipulate that judges involved in evaluating plaintiffs claims in the context of ERISA might have construed the law incorrectly and that the resulting body of case law is an obstacle for policyholders seeking relief. We can all agree with Dickens’ Mr. Bumble.
But it seems to me that your blog supports the argument that the problem isn’t lack of regulation, it is poor regulation. Moreover, it is inherently hard to get the regulation right, because the rule-makers can’t foresee all scenarios and they can’t get the incentives right and they can’t prevent misapplication of the rules through incompetence or malign interest.
There is a decent argument for decoupling health insurance from employment, although they are only partially coupled today. The Republic survived the absence of pervasive employer-sponsored insurance until the 1940’s. On the other hand, this would probably result in less insurance overall, and the girl in your wrongful death case who didn’t get her liver transplant still probably doesn’t get her liver transplant.
Maybe the administration should limit its goals to overhauling ERISA. But that isn’t what they claim to care about: they claim that the crisis is about the uninsured, who aren’t covered by ERISA. So there is something of a bait-and-switch here.
…if it’s
employmentgovernment-based woe be unto you if you ever need to contest a self-serving bottom-line driven decision byyour insurera government agency to deny you care. You’ll find out you really don’t have “insurance” at all.Note that this statement applies a forteriori with the listed emendations.
My heart leapt when I read this, taking it as Obama’s peroration to an announcement that he was going to fire most of his Administration and then resign. No such luck, however.
Here is the CBO report.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/106xx/doc10642/10-7-Baucus_letter.pdf
The basic story short in the table on p.15 is subsidized “exchange” programs beginning in 2014 partially funded by excise taxes on “High premium” employer-sponsored plans.
Now the job of the CBO is to score the impact on the deficit over 10 years. It is not to make projections about consumer behavior. Their basic scoring methodologies are of necessity static, in that they cannot anticipate 2nd and 3rd order feedback effects. The obvious risk on page 15 is that increasing health care costs will push more and more employer-offered plans into the high-premium category, increasing potential taxes, but leading companies to cut coverage and individuals to choose to take the subsidy in the exchange policies rather than paying taxes in the employer-offered plans.
The CBO report can’t hide the obvious budget gimmickry involved in waiting five years to begin to address the “crisis.”
I can’t find anything in the report to support Obama’s claim that reforms would lower premiums. I do find support for the idea that premiums might increase, but that individuals might not see those increases because of the subsidies.
Joseph Marshall Says:
“Examined by whom?
You’ve shown no evidence that you have. You just have only shown the surface level understanding that comes from reciting dem talking points referencing the report.
I’m probably the third person to point this out.
But other people are dunces for not examining a report… while you hoist your credibility to it even though you probably have not examined it… either.
Now Rahm Emanuel says about Fox News: “It’s not a news organization so much as it has a perspective.”
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/10/18/rahm-emanuel-fox-isnt-news-organization-because-it-has-perspective
I should have put quote like this “….It’s not a news organization so much as it has a perspective.”
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Here’s where the Baucus proposal falls flat: I can ditch my insurance, pay a small fine, then pickup insurance when I need it.
Ergo, I have all the conveniences of having health coverage without paying nearly as much as I would if I just maintained my current coverage.
Of course, we have no idea what the final bill will look like until it comes out of the conference comittee. And the powers in Congress will want to pass it as soon as possible after. In my experience, people who resort to telling me I have to do someing “now now now” don’t have my best interests in mind.
Public discourse vs private musings
In a participatory democracy, we could and should make the distinctions. You accept it because it permits you the illusion we live in one. Or, that Obama is of the “Left” while Bush or McCain are “Conservative.” Punditry, puffery, hot air.
What comes out of the mouths (and minds) of those in DC on K Street and Wall Street matters, whether cleared for public consumption or recorded in private.
The rest is game-playing, whether it’s for Fox, MSNBC or this site. At times fun, once in a while thoughtful or insightful, but tea-leaves reading of a cup empty for 90% of our citizens.
Reality is in the jobs lost, homes foreclosed and thus more on Reality TV and the NFL
Neither our “liberal” or “conservative” leaders and elites conserved what was the best of American life only half a century or so ago. To hell with both sides.
Re: Nixon. A champion of resentment. And yet, he had some legislation passed Obama can’t or won’t.
A helL of a lot smarter than Obama, and a much better student of history. But oh, those resentments of Jews, Ivy Leaguers, women…
Still, the best book on him: “Nixon Agonistes” by Garry Wills. Not a hatchet job, by the way.
Two brief additions:
1. Nothing in your original post mentioned public addresses as distinct from private remarks. That came only in your reply to my brief remark.
2. Nixon’s comments were not made to Pat (re: we don’t know what Obama says to Michelle), but to his Chief of Staff and Secretary of State,
As I said, I think Obama is two fifths hype and three fifths fudge (borrowed), but probably not close to Dick in hating people, groups etc.
In some sort of sad way, it’s because I think he is emptier than Nixon–of BOTH abilty and flaws.
Joseph:
Oh please, that new CBO report also showed that in the last two years of that first ten years, the program started to go into deficit..in other words, the report was made on a preliminary plan by the Senate that included ten years of revenue and less than 7 years of expenditures.
Add to that the fact that the CBO report is based on the fact that taxes go up and medicare costs go down due to cuts. In other words the costs will still be borne by tax payers and consumers.
In fact, it will certainly cause higher premiums, any fool can see that. And it will also require that people who are not currently paying for health care insurance pay either a tax or premiums.
I know people who think Obama is planning on giving them free health care. Imagine how shocked they will be when they find out it is anything but free.
And the truth is I trust the insurance industry a lot more than I trust Obama.
Good catch, Thomass – Joseph Marshal has NOT read the CBO report, but has no problem demanding that we do that.
The problem here is that he simply cannot understand why we don’t accept liberal framing of this issue. After all, he has offered it clearly.
If he was not a captive of the Liberal Narrative, he would understand our discourse. As it is, he is disconsolate that we insist on speaking about ‘irrelevant’ and ‘unimportant’ things and ignoring those points (the only ‘relevant’ points) that support his conclusions.
Why is the CBO report largely irrelevant? Because the bill it analyzes was designed specifically for the CBO review kabuki and bears little, if any, relation to the bill that will be rammed through with only 50 Democrat votes after the “budget reconciliation” process.
I’ll be the first to say it George. You are an idiot.
Here’s why.
Obama’s address to the nation was something we all heard right away. If he thinks he is going to persuade people and BRING THEM TOGETHER – with that rhetoric – he needs to grow a brain also.
It didn’t need to be said that Nixon’s private conversations weren’t good. But they weren’t heard til years later.
Can’t wait to hear Obama’s fomentations..
BTW, Neo didn’t mention a lot of things…. try to stay focused bud. You can do it. I know you can. 😉 Focus
george salamon: My response to your remark was a clarification of what was already quite obvious. Why would I be comparing what one president says in private to what another says in public? Illogical and irrelevant, and it never occurred to me that this would need to be clarified for any thinking person.
In addition, we only know ex-post-facto what Nixon said in private. Some day we may learn what Obama is saying in private. It’s not that private utterances are irrelevant, but we don’t know a thing about what Obama is saying in private. Perhaps someone someday may be interested in comparing the two sets of private utterances (Nixon’s vs. Obama’s) if we ever do get access to Obama’s private utterances (which I happen to doubt we will). But right now there can be no point whatsoever in comparing apples to oranges (public to private remarks)
I explicitly linked to President Obama’s public address in the post. it ought to have been clear that that was what I was talking about.
Just because public utterances don’t tell the whole story doesn’t mean we can’t and shouldn’t study them and learn from them. They certainly have an effect on the public.
This is way off track, but I can’t resist. Bob Dylan has a new Christmas album. The incongruity of Dylan singing Silent Night is not easy for me, but …. after all these years. He’ll donate his royalties to the nonprofit org Feeding America.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,567901,00.html?test=faces
They are not oranges and apples. They are pieces of a mindset, whether that of Nixon then or Obama, now. When exposed matters far, far less than the substance(s) revealed. Who were Nixon’s enemies, and why? Too soon to compile or categorize those of Obama? Maybe. But then, why link them, even as two different kinds of invective? Maybe a similar mechanism was and still is at work for both presidents? Now that might be a start for a post.
Both conservatives (neo-or-paleo) and liberals insist on differences between the two sides, when they are two heads of the same beastie.
But then, the games played, in Washington, on the networks, on blogs, would no longer be useful to gloss over the substantive issues, the direction the country is going.
Which is a direction Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and now Obama have all marched us in–orchestrated and cheered on by banking and finance interests and the whiz kids now “rescuing” us from the mess they created.
But please, let the games continue. Bush was the Evil One to one side as Obama is to those here.To me, these are games Summers and Geithner and the boys at Goldman Sachs want you–and your opponents at, say, Daily Kos, to play. And they are being played–witness the MSNBC vs Fox game.
So, who benefits from such nonsense?
Now, Dr Spielvogel, maybe we can begin.
Stay in good health, even you, Baklava. Don’t just focus; connect some of the dots.
Cheers.
george salamon, they are apples and oranges, whether you want to admit it or not.
I can tell you are wound up about some Master Narrative that will rock our world. Do you need to get hot and bothered about what Nixon said in private nearly 40 years ago?
Well, Oblio, yeah, actually. I would like it if many people in this country would get “hot and bothered” about what Nixon said then, about what Summers and Geithner and Obama and the presidents of our banks and corporations and universities said more recently.
I’d like that a lot better than their watching Rush and Obama or Olberman and O’Reilly shouting at each other.
A thin fruit compot, Nixoin’s private rants, Obama’s public beefs. But if you want my apples-oranges divide, try this: Nixon’s invective was honest bile, Obama’s is public hypocrisy.
Nothing came of the former, nothing will come of the latter.
I can’t imagine what significance you see in Nixon’s private tirades that are relevant to your Master Narrative. Which presidents of which banks or universities have you upset, and why?
george salamon: I get it now—-you appear to be into some arcane and personal Unified Field Theory of Politics, and believe that the rest of us poor idiots are all just flailing around to no purpose.
You also seem to not understand the point of my post, which was not so much to gain any insight into Obama’s mind, but to observe that he is using invective against segments of our own society (Fox news, insurance companies, bankers, executives, the rich) and labeling them publicly as enemies. This is a technique to move the public in a certain direction and motivate them towards a certain goal. No previous president, to the best of my recollection, has used this particular tool with the public to an extent anything remotely like this, and I think it’s an ominous development that Obama is choosing to do so.
States do regulate insurance to some degree, but the federal law which applies to employment-based insurance guts any meaningful regulation and in particular removes any meaningful consequence for bad behavior from insurance companies.
What? Federal law fucked it all up? We need more federal laws!
It’s the most heavily regulated industry in America.
Both conservatives (neo-or-paleo) and liberals insist on differences between the two sides, when they are two heads of the same beastie.
Oh…. George is a kook. I run into a lot of these guys at gun shows. Love ’em. These guys are great. You can really wind them up for your own amusement
They read the “New American” and they usta read the “Ron Paul White Power Report” until Ron Paul toned it down to go legit.
Hey George, did you know that Bush I, Bush II and Clinton were Masons?
Anyone wanna bet George is a ” 9/11 truther”? Anybody?
Why, we must not, under any circumstances, attempt to construct a theory about our political system–although I see nothing arcane or personal about my pieces of it here, and “Unified,” shucks, I’m no Hegel.
I do understand the purpose of your post. And you do too, telling us that “to the best of your recollection” no president has used this tool…
So, work on those recollections and see if big bad Obama may look a little less ominous when they get better. Socialism isn’t about to get your mama, neo, nor mine, nor my granddaughter.
But what will finance capitalism and the global economy bring our country? More of the current misery for 90% of the people and bigger bonuses for the Goldman Sachs boys? Or…?
I never ever thought Bush was Hitler. But Obama ain’t Lenin, either. They’re Yale and Columbia and Harvard and Harvard. Neither is a traitor to his peers. Noises do not make an ideology.
george salamon: the phrase “to the best of my recollection” is one I often use to acknowledge that I haven’t had time to do a complete search and so I cannot possibly be certain. In this case, for example,I have not read every utterance of every president. I invited you and others to come up with public utterances from previous presidents that seem to match Obama’s level of public invective (towards elements of our own society, that is; not towards an enemy in war, either hot or cold). So far no one has done so. But I’m open to reading them if someone can produce them.
Unlike you, I am not playing a snarky game here. And unlike you, I don’t pretend to have knowledge I don’t have.
Neo,
It’s not just public entities or groups of people that Obama is going after, it’s private citizens.
Obama is a sociopath.
It’s gotten so bad that the left are starting cringe – and it seem not to matter a wit to Obama.
Having read the President’s address, several observation. He talks about “insurance companies” raising medical costs, when basically an insurance company acts like like a tax collector who takes out a percentage of the proceeds for his fee. While the fee percentage may be an issue, the fee percentages that go to insurance companies would not be responsible for the doubling of insurance costs that the President discusses.
So, it is not difficult to see that insurance companies are here being scapegoated. Complaining about insurance companies as the cause of increased medical costs is basically the equivalent of shooting the messenger.
Anyone who talks about reducing medical costs without discussing tort reform is acharlatan.
While he claims that his opponents who cite studies are mistaken, he doesn’t get into any specifics about why they are mistaken. Perhaps he didn’t want to repeat the mistake he previously made of inaccurately passing on various patient anecdotes,
His address basically comes down to “I am right, and my opponents are wrong” without any reasons for having said so.
I agree that george salamon is mistaking public versus private speech. One example of Nixon going over the top: his 1950 Senate campaign, referring to Helen Gahagan Douglas as “pink lady.” Spiro’s “nattering nabobs of negativism,” courtesy of William Safire, simply added entertainment.
Some information on Helen Gahagan Douglas
To muddy the water, here are some quotes from HST, who was not afraid to condemn his opponents.
While HST was no longer President, when he made this statement, it still gives a flavor of the man.
One difference between Obama and HST is that HST was a straight shooter who told you exactly where he stood. Obama, by contrast, give the impression of giving carefully calibrated lawyer-like responses that can be interpreted many ways. HST was not a lawyer.
Final quote: http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=13&articleid=20091012_11_A2_AlGore176393&rss_lnk=1
That would be the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
And contrary to common belief, the insurance industry, insofar as employment-based insurance is concerned, is not regulated in any meaningful way. Any state regulation which has any teeth is preempted by ERISA, and ERISA in its place provides woefully insufficient substitutes.
Gringo: Nixon wasn’t president at the time, however.
Not only was Truman not a lawyer, he didn’t graduate from college (not because he wasn’t smart, though—it was for economic reasons). I wrote about Truman here.
Quick searching around on Helen Gahagan Douglas shows that her Democratic primary opponent, Manchester Boddy, called her the “Pink Lady,” and said that she was “pink right down to her underwear.” Nixon reminded the voters of that charge and her Congressional voting record printed on pink sheets to underscore the point. Nixon captured 59 percent of the vote in the 1950 California Senate race.
The question to which I don’t know the answer is, whether Douglas was in fact a Fellow Traveler. Stranger things have happened. For example, I was stunned at the degree to which the Communist Party had infiltrated the labor movement and the Democratic Party in Hawaii during the 1940’s. The Venona decrypts implicate people a lot more famous than she.
Any state regulation which has any teeth is preempted by ERISA, and ERISA in its place provides woefully insufficient substitutes.
What?! Federal laws fucked it up?! We need more federal laws to fix it!
Oblio, thanks for a thoughtful response. The Obama folks have shifted the focus, or at least tried to, to the currently-insured, based on their realization that if the majority of the population has (or thinks it has) insurance they are not going to be moved by the plight of those without, at least not enough to support real change.
I’m pounding the table about this here and elsewhere because I believe that without reform in this area any other measures will be futile to do any good. You can give everyone in the country insurance and if you do not also make it enforceable, ultimately in court, you’ve given them something completely illusory. If you allow insurers to deny claims due to post-existing conditions then what you have is not “insurance.”
How anyone can mistake me as an apologist for what is on the table right now is beyond me. I am a big critic because ERISA preemption is preserved by any and all current proposals. I do disagree with your point that this is a separate issue because IMO this should be a big part of any “reform” and it is being completely overlooked.
See what I mean?
Richard, is your point that people with employer-sponsored insurance should be concerned about having a government backstop for individual coverage because their rights are vulnerable under ERISA? If so, it still seems like a bait-and-switch to me, because the administration could offer ERISA overhaul as the most efficient way to address this concern. Conjuring up ERISA-related fears seems like a particularly disingenuous way to drum up support for a program that has the potential to explode the deficit through higher taxes on the insured and subsidies for the uninsured.
Did you read my paragraph about the inherent difficulties of regulating in this space?
Richard, the point Occam’s Beard made remains: someone is going to deny coverage when the costs get too high. Will you be happier when it is the government that does the denying?
Neo: Agreed, RMN wasn’t President then. My bad for not sticking to the criteria: what a sitting President said in public. For that matter,as I previously stated, it is also likely that the Truman quote where he lit into Nixon was uttered when Truman was no longer President.
Oblio: re the Communist infiltration of labor unions in Hawaii. Are you aware of the Chicago connection between Frank Marshall Davis, who was a mentor of sorts during Obama’s childhood in Hawaii, and Valerie Jarrett’s father-in-law? If you are not, I will dig up the link.
That was an interestng article from the LA times, Richard. Surprisingly forthright:
“There are going to be a lot of denials,” said insurance industry analyst Robert Laszewski, a former health insurance executive. “I am not setting insurance companies up to be villains. But we are telling them to bend the cost curve. How else are they going to bend the cost curve?”
Indeed. How else, Richard?
They can stay in business and cover many treatments, or they can be ordered to cover all, go bankrupt and cover none and benefit none.
Gringo, yes, I am aware, but let’s not start another rabbit on this thread! I only brought up the Hawaii case as an example of some of the surprising things you find out when you go back and do a little research. We only looked at it because Frank Marshall’s son showed up here to defend his father’s memory. The lesson to me was, the truth about the Left is buried under a mountain of lies, and you can’t accept any assertion about the past at face value.
Truman was famously and aggressively partisan. I have serious doubts about the myth of Truman as a sort of straight-talking Sacred Everyman. Like Obama, he was also the product of a notoriously corrupt machine, the Pendergast organization in Kansas City. I suspect that Truman was an ass. Sorry, neo.
Having said that, we should all get on our knees and thank God that he, and not Henry Wallace, was FDR’s running mate in 1944. It could have been worse.
Richard, is your point that people with employer-sponsored insurance should be concerned about having a government backstop for individual coverage because their rights are vulnerable under ERISA?
Nah. His point is:
“WAAAAAH Somebody rolled snake-eyes in the lottery that is life and they’re gonna die!”
How can I get on the list?
Yeah, I don’t support the program which is proposed. Not trying to drum up support for it; I am saying it stinks because it leaves all the people with employment-based “insurance” with the same illusory non-insurance policies they have now.
I don’t disagree that regulation is difficult and fraught with unintended consequences. I just don’t think that is a reason to confer immunity from legal consequences for breach of contract and fraud.
I do not think I am making my point very well. I acknowledge that some treatments will be denied. I acknowledge rationing by some means is unavoidable.
What I am upset about is that ERISA has gutted breach of contract law and fraud law. If an insurance company issues a policy that says something is covered then they should have to cover it. If it is not to be covered then there should be a clear policy exclusion saying it isn’t. Then they don’t have to cover it.
I want the law to make insurance companies, like everyone else, have to honor their contractual obligations. So as some of the posts over on my blog illustrate, if you have “insurance” which covers, say, AIDS up to $1,000,000, and the premiums are paid up, then the insurance company should not be able to get away with pulling the plug on that coverage which has already been extended without any consequence. That is not “insurance.”
If an insurance company invokes an exclusion for “experimental” treatments to deny a liver transplant, maybe they were right in doing so. But maybe they were wrong. And maybe they were fraudulent. It is absurd that we never even get into the courthouse door to determine which of those is the case. Nope — the insurer is immune from judicial scrutiny.
I do not want a government plan. I want private insurers to peddle their policies and then have to live up to them.
I do not want them to be ordered to cover all of them. I want them to be legally accountable when they wrongfully refuse to cover one they have already agreed to cover in their insurance policy.
My point is that if an insurance company has promised in its policy to cover a treatment, and they breach that promise and someone dies as a result, the insurance company should face some consequence other than an uptick in their stock price.
Thanks to all for an interesting discussion by the way.
Thanks, Richard, I understand your frustration and what you are saying. Thanks for adding to our understanding of the impact of ERISA.
Richard, thank you for hanging in there and ‘splaining this on us in spite of my unkind comments. I am very sorry. I hopelessly misunderstood your point and my knee jerked wildly.
I do not want them to be ordered to cover all of them. I want them to be legally accountable when they wrongfully refuse to cover one they have already agreed to cover in their insurance policy.
OK, that is a good point. Under any understanding of law, contracts go both ways….
I will go back and read your comments and website without my stupid preconception of your point and perhaps I will learn something.
Thank you again for making a second-effort to explain this to us. I am sorry for my crappy remarks.
Dear ∅bama,
Your address to the nation was NOT persuasive and it was not a presidential speech.
Grow up and learn economics so that the US can SUCCEED !
Concerned loving American,
Baklava
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Obama has slandered doctors repeatedly. He slandered bondholders while he abused them and disregarded their rights. He has openly and repeatedly called his political opponents liars. He has slandered the people of Israel. In foreign speeches, he’s slandered the American people. He slanders George W. Bush so often his mouth goes on autopilot when he does. Now he’s slandering the insurance companies.
He has made so many false statements about health care legislation that doesn’t even exist yet that even sympathetic MSM outlets have called him on it.
Not since FDR’s virulent attacks on business and the rich (which caused investment to turn negative and a relapse of the Depression) has a president been so relentless in his attacks on segments of the American people. It appears that slander is the first page of BO-zo’s playbook. Not surprising, it’s the first page of most liberals’ playbook.
Thanks, Richard, for your informative and temperate comments. You’ve probably gained several new visitors to your blog, and certainly earned the extra traffic.
Oblio and Gray:
Thank you for your gracious comments. I must acknowledge I was not entirely clear in earlier posts and particularly when the connection between the topic of the main post and my musings was not so obvious as I may have imagined.
And Gray no worries about vigorous and snarky responses, and thank you for your apology which was also quite gracious. No offense taken in any case. I think the blogosphere is enough of an echo chamber that it is easy to form early conclusions about someone’s position. FWIW I am what most folks here would probably call a liberal so your instincts were not that far off. I just prefer to talk substance when possible, which is not always where these discussions go on either side, but is where this one has, which I very much appreciate. As my blog, which I readily admit is a polemic, reveals, I am not so circumspect myself at times.
“I am …a liberal. “I prefer to talk substance…”
Good heavens! I must look up your site and peruse it, just out of curiosity. I must say that you are probably mistaken about being a liberal if, in fact, you prefer substance to invective. Just sayin’
Do you realize that Nixon was our last truly progressive President until Obama came along?
You can debate health care details all day long but the salient fact is that the Obama administration is not looking for the best possible, sustainable solution. Not with health care, not with the stimulus, not with cap & trade, not in foreign policy.
If they were, their behavior would not make any sense at all.
You don’t recall Nixon?
You don’t recall the FBI’s spy taps, unconstitutional searches, goon thugs in charge of various secret blackmail files, and their successful ousting of a President that won’t promote what the FBI thought were the right leaders, because you are their dupe and you were played for one and then discarded just as easily.
if we ever do get access to Obama’s private utterances (which I happen to doubt we will)
They will have to be leaked by those with access to recordings of Obama in private moments. In Nixon’s case, that was almost everybody in the Executive branch, specifically including the Joint Chiefs and the FBI. In Obama’s case, it is most likely only the Secret Service. And why would the Secret Service allow such a leak? They are still, essentially, an apolitical institution. So far.
If Johnston is the same person that I communicated to before about ERISA, then I can vouch for him as being genuine and a defender of those made helpless by the federal system.
He, because he works in relation to this field very closely, has direct experience which should be valued. At the same time, his biases can be quite obvious, but so long as the truth is told, it does not detract from what his claims.
As far as I have researched this matter, given some initial arguments I have had with him, ERISA was originally designed by unions to facilitate employee enforced sponsoring of retirement benefits. Somehow, this law provided a loophole or nebulous contract that spread the jurisdiction over employee provided healthcare as well (which incidentally comes out of employee’s payroll). So because insurance companies can’t sell across state lines, and because they are essentially paid by business owners using employee cash, they are not particularly worried about denying care to a single individual. You see, the individual is not paying the insurance company. The business is. And if the benefit of the plan dislikes the plan, they have to switch jobs to get a new one, or pay out of pocket.
You see, most of the higher quality medical packages are paid out of your own pocket, directly from you, the consumer. This provides you greater leverage because you are the one negotiating, on your own behalf. You are not having your money taken away by a middle man, business owners and bean counters, and then funneled to some nebulous ‘cost savings’ plan that business owners like to see.
The state regulations could mitigate some of this, but ERISA was a federal law, so has federal jurisdiction override powers. Like KELO, you may say. The Unions weren’t satisfied with sticking it to local businesses. It had to be all businesses. That’s where their extortion money comes from, you see.
This is not a liberal message, because it’s an anti-Union. Johnston may not frame it that way, but that’s how the history comes out. He’s not against Unions per say, but nor is he for them. He is against the legal complications of ERISA, due to his profession. Which is valid, as he deals with the law more than he deals with unions. Thus changing the law would affect real world results as he sees it, faster than doing some political assassination of union power brokers.
My point is that if an insurance company has promised in its policy to cover a treatment, and they breach that promise and someone dies as a result, the insurance company should face some consequence other than an uptick in their stock price.
Johnston won’t frame it the way I will. Perhaps because he doesn’t think like me/us, or perhaps because he chooses not to take this particular path. Regardless, I’ll do it.
One of the reasons the Democrats have a demand for their ‘reforms’ is because of actual insurance abuses like this. Non-coverage. Things like cost savings killing people. What we may see as bureaucratic screw ups due to law or lack of capitalistic competition, the Left portrays as the greed of capitalism and the faults of the private sector.
If you allow the Democrat party to freely do this, your chances of winning is going down. And why should you allow the Democrats to control the propaganda front so easily? After all, they were the ones that tried to regulate employer-medical insurance relationships, which resulted in loopholes for insurance companies and a lack of care for individuals. Why should you let them not only get away with the consequences of their political lobbying, but actually benefit from their previous mistakes?
It was the Democrats that created a situation where insurance companies could deny coverage and not be punished by law or the market. It was the Democrats that then got money from those insurance companies. It is the Democrats not publicly slandering the insurance companies. It was, still is, and will be the Democrat machine politics.
Reform the problem, fix it, as the Republicans tried to do, and you remove much of the Leftist ammunition truck of death backing up their ‘Obamacare’. Henry Waxman and company blocked any attempts by Republicans to raise the ERISA issue because it wasn’t ‘under their jurisdiction’. You can believe that was all there was to it, if you wish. But I prefer to believe in the heart and soul of the Democrat party.
There isn’t much I like in any of Obama’s/the Democrats’ health care/insurance plans. But probably what bothers me the most about it all is combining an extremely complex scheme with the attempt at an outrageous speed of passage. If the plan is good, what’s wrong with taking the time to do some studying? What’s wrong with a more incremental approach to fixing the problems?
The combination of the complexity and the speed are what scream out FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD!
hey neo…
i think rove may be reading us.. 🙂
Rove: Obama building an enemies list
What does Fox News’ Karl Rove and Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik have in common? Both of them have called the Obama administration’s weird war on Fox News Channel “Nixonian.”
hotair.com/archives/2009/10/19/rove-obama-building-an-enemies-list/
The best argument against a massive federal health insurance plan right now is the huge federal budget deficit. Undertaking a trillion dollar project in the face of our current budget problems and weak economy is just plain nuts. If foreign countries quit buying our bonds, we’ll look like Argentina in short order.
Add the chamber of commerce to BO-zo’s enemy list. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28445.html
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FDR preceded Nixon on havnig enemies list, and even beat nixon hands down on what he was willing to do. (details in FDR post)