White House attacks "professional left" and "Canadian-style health care"

Well I guess he'sjust telling everyone the truth.. Obama and his team are bourgeois capitalists.

And some folks would commit the U.S. to a Palin presidency by making any Democrat unelectable.

The Republicans have taken on the new total objective of the neo-con...elimination of state involvement - guv'mint to the Great Unread - and are doing nicely with the kind of directionless, objective-free liberal support demonstrated hereabouts.  Gates realizes that you prepare the way for Conservative gains. 

Try moving your analysis into the Capitalism of the 21st Century...both for the U.S. and Canada. You allow Steve to laugh at your naivete. 

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But to complete the story as it appeared (again, the reality check):

"A recent attack from the liberal group Progressive Change Campaign Committee apparently angered Gibbs. Earlier this week, one of the group's founders, Adam Green, accused Obama of "caving without a fight" by dropping the public option during the bare-knuckled battle for health-care legislation earlier this year.

The White House, on the other hand, believes it's taken on several liberal causes without getting any credit. White House officials point to health-care reform, financial regulatory legislation, a fair-pay bill for women and Obama's move to end the war in Iraq, with combat operations concluding this month.

He's also nominated two female Supreme Court justices, including the first Hispanic.

"There's 101 things we've done," said Gibbs.

But in his later statement, Gibbs extended an olive branch to the left."

Ending with the timeless appeal :"We should all, me included, stop fighting each other and arguing about our differences on certain policies, and instead work together to make sure everyone knows what is at stake because we've come too far to turn back now."

But it does look like some union people in Canada will get their wish for a Palin in 2012 and the end to public institutions serving the public.

A press secretary is supposed to defend his boss; that's his job, whatever he believes in his heart of hearts, whatever his boss believes. He says they've done 101 things, and names 5, of which 1 is lame, 2 is lame and late, 3 is occult, 4 is bogus - and vastly outweighed by escalation in Afghanistan - and 5 is irrelevant. So, he's exaggerating a bit. Maybe that's also part of his job?

On the subject of health care, he's defending the lame legislation which was difficult and expensive to achieve, on the grounds that they can't realistically expect anything better in present-day USA. Adding a note of sarcasm and hostility against the Canadian system and its advocates in order to shield himself from the Rabid Right. Ignoble, but hardly surprising. Nor would it surprise me to learn that this guy is burning out. It's a shitty job at the best of times, which these are not.

I think the Obamites have been somewhat clever in their dismissal of Canadian style medicare for their purposes. Health insurance premiums have been handled by US employers and private insurers for a long time. If one reads James Galbraith, health spending in the US represents a significant part of their economy that has nothing to do with free market capitalism. Yes it's socialism for rich people and doesn't work nearly as efficiently to distribute health care services to as many citizens as possible, buy the privatized setup is a significant part of their economy.

And their economy is in such a mess today that it has been said that restructuring just this part of it toward Canadian style medicare would destroy too much of the overlap and redundancies built-in to the system and cause too many to be laid off in a time of recession. This is essentially what the unions in Ontario told Bob Rae during an ideologically driven recession in the early 1990s - that creation of public auto insurance would throw too many of their workers out of work in a time when jobs were lacking in Ontario and across Canada really.

I do think Obama's health care reforms are an important first step toward truly universal health care in the states at some point. It's a madhouse down that way. The tea partiers have worked hard at painting Obama as a Muslim Imam hyphen communist in opposition to meaningful health care reforms. They have not been so successful in propagandizing the American public into believing that bailouts for Wall Street is good for Main Street America though. Sarah Palin will inherit a lot of financial issues from dubya and Obama. Big changes are due in the US and around the western world over the next five to ten years or so. They have to spin their tires in the mud for a while first though.

quote: 

"Unionist: Good riddance. Now maybe someone will start withdrawing troops from foreign lands and concentrating on dismantling the handful of domestic U.S. social institutions that exist. Good riddance."

Good riddance to medicare, medicaid ,government managed social security and what's left of publicly funded education?

This, sadly, is where the mystical belief in an all-powerful president, free of the checks and balances of Congress and the courts leads you. Winner take all. Mainstreet is sure to rush out and buy that thinking. 

And there is obviously nothing forthcoming in the way of an explanation of how to bring an irrational political community on board.

Nice to have it made in the shade, free of responsibility.  But such thinking is also losing us our hardwon social institutions.  Tommy, who always chuckled at the choice of Tweedledee or Tweedledum, at the same time always had to fend off Humpty Dumpty on his left. And at a Vancouver convention in the 1970s he recognized the nature, if not the dimensions, of the new economic monster rising to the south.   But I don't think he could have guessed at the degree to which the new paradigm would be rejected by Canada's "progressive" forces in their scramble to retain the language and the intellectually comforting concepts of another age. Labour certainly doesn't want to rock the economic boat. It flees for job safety to the Flahertys. And there seems nothing coming forward to lead the way toward job growth.  That isn't even part of socialism's program any more.    But what armchair critics in other areas!   Small wonder Gibbs vented honest anger at the hypocrisy...which of course is greeted with juvenile laughter. 

And why is Obama powerless to overturn any of these juvenile concerns, but the first right-wing pres who gets in will have no problem clearing house? If that's the case, why bother at all supporting this placeholder president when the inevitable is right around the corner regardless?

ETA. And anyone who has ever read skdadl knows she is no "Johnny One-note." That's a laughable personal attack, George. Knock it off.

Catchfire wrote:

And why is Obama powerless to overturn any of these juvenile concerns, but the first right-wing pres who gets in will have no problem clearing house? If that's the case, why bother at all supporting this placeholder president when the inevitable is right around the corner regardless?

You also don't believe the left is losing out because of its inability to provide jobs and social security to the "average masses" Catch?   There's bugger-all inevitable, there's just a lack of support from those who don't and can't wade in to the battles that matter for John and Jane Doe.   There's not been one response to the invitation to do more than criticize in that regard...provide an outline of an alternative focus given the structural restraints of American political-economy.   And I don't see anyone taking up a book to try to understand what has changed and created this yawning chasm between their correctness and the real world.  

You see, the "right" is there side by side with John and Jane, onside as it were...as anyone taking the trouble to read the awful language of Bageant would understand.  Small wonder that he really, really dislikes liberals. 

The guffaws are even spilling over into other threads:

"Here's the statue back - had it assessed, not worth anything when melted down. As for the $1.4 million, sorry, that's already gone to charity."

Here was one of them:

Quote:The Central Asia Institute which works to spread education to girls who belong to the backward sections of Afghanistan and Pakistan will receive $100,000.

I'm nominating Obama for the position of Surge-General. Any seconders?"

The Central Asia institutue, of course, is Greg Mortenson's (Three Cups of Tea, Stones into Schools) and Mortenson, himself, is suspect, hereabouts, or working with/for the U.S.military forces in Afghanistan. But it's all grist for the humour mill. (and of course, it is too damned bad that the U.S.could not help Afghanistan and Pakistan build thousands of schools at about $25,000 a crack...if the villagers provide most of the labour).      That $25,000 also supplies a teacher to the village school for a year...along with the schoolhouse.

I don't know much about health care. I always assumed Canada's was just better than the US because I hear Canadians critisize US health care all the time but I'm wondering now if the US health care system deserves some credit?

A woman I know discovered she had a medical problem. She works in Canada but lives in the states, commutes every day. She had an MRI scheduled a week after she learned of her condition. A month later her surgry was scheduled. It's going to be expensive, she was given some kind of payment plan but shes goign to get treated in under 2 months.

My brother scheduled an MRI last year and he was placed on a 6 month waiting period. He needed back surgry. After his MRI he was scheduled for his operation in 8 months- thats a long time to live in pain and I'm glad it's nothing that could worsen like cancer.

Paying for health care seems shitty but personally I think if it was me I would rather pay and get operated on in a month or two then have to wait around for a year or more before the problem is fixed.

I'm sure there is more to it than that but how she explained it it makes a lot of sense.  Of course that's not taking into consideration people who can't afford healthcare which is obviously a huge and very important thing.  I wish we could have the best of both worlds. Free health care with the speed and busniess approach of the US.

i think this is just a great example of how democracy works in the US.   it's not the people that elected obama that have any rights to try and influence his policies, they are just supposed to be thankful for whatever crumbs obama throws at them and shut the hell up.

When they criticize his administrations actions thats seen as being unfair meddling in the dems business.

contrast that to someplace like bolivia where the voters actually CREATED the platform and policies that the government is carrying out.

democracy is in BIG trouble!

Quote:

Somebody here actually supports universal health care.  Breakthrough.  

Is there a large body of fresh water near you?

If so, go jump in it.

Jingles wrote:

You do have quite a record of credulousness.

That's pretty opinionated don't you think? Depending on your POV everyone here could say that about anyone here that disagrees with them...

That silly bugger Obama fails us yet again:

The NYTimes

August 23, 2010

U.S. Judge Rules Against Obama's Stem Cell Policy

By GARDINER HARRIS

WASHINGTON - A federal district judge on Monday blocked President Obama's 2009 executive order that expanded embryonic stem cell research, saying it violated a ban on federal money being used to destroy embryos.

The ruling came as a shock to scientists at the National Institutes of Health and at universities across the country, which had viewed the Obama administration's new policy and the grants provided under it as settled law. Scientists scrambled Monday evening to assess the ruling's immediate impact on their work.

"I have had to tell everyone in my lab that when they feed their cells tomorrow morning, they better use media that has not been funded by the federal government," said Dr. George Q. Daley, director of the stem cell transplantation program at Children's Hospital Boston, referring to food given to cells. "This ruling means an immediate disruption of dozens of labs doing this work since the Obama administration made its order."

In his ruling, Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that his temporary injunction returned federal policy to the "status quo," but few officials, scientists or lawyers in the case were sure Monday night what that meant.

Dr. Daley was among those who said they believed that it meant that work financed under the new rules had to stop immediately; others said it meant that the health institutes had to use Bush administration rules for future grants.