Read my article on President Barack Obama in today’s Sydney Morning Herald
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6 comments to Yes we can… but so far, Obama hasn’t |
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Your article title is very misleading. Obama has delivered. It is awfully clear he has. However it is being undereported. You might want to look into the TARP money that is about to deliver a huge windfall to the federal goverment. The slow work of closing Gitmo. Its being done and restoring the constitution. This health bill is going to be massive. Lots happening but it takes time. The democrats were handed an a steaming pile of turd to work with. It’s just going to take time. And history will tell.
Anne,
Your article on Obama in today’s SMH is interesting and your comments about Obama’s lack of leadership are on the money…His disgrace in Copenhagen is an embarassment to Americans. The Chinese have repeatedly manipulated him to their advantage. He is on a trajectory to become the first one term Presidnet since Carter, with a poll released today showing he has the lowest approval rating of any US President at the end of his first year in office.
You seem to be as sold on the need for an increase in government health care in the USA as the rest of the press. Comparing it to Civil Rights is a stretch. That had a moral imperative that this item never will. It will bring some benefits but also impose more of the strict government controls on individuals and organizations that Obama is becoming well known for, further evidence of his authoritarian tendencies. I suggest that anyone with an interest in the topic read the Canadian written assessment of the myths of US Health Care (URL below). The net of it is that the majority of uncovered Americans are eligible for Medicaid (govt. health insurance for poor people, paid for by other people) but they have simply failed to enroll in the program!….Also, Obama is mandating that insurance be purchased by people who don’t want it, such as the ten million or so young people who do not want to be paying for items they do not need but are required to buy in their respective states, such as senior health care for themselves. This is a result of lobbyists in many states having been able to require health insurers to include their products in all health insurance sold in that state.
http://liberty.pacificresearch.org/publications/the-top-ten-myths-of-american-health-care-a-citizens-guide
2) For the record, health care poster boy Senator Ted Kennedy was instrumental in the Senate rejecting a national health insurance scheme put forward by Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. Kennedy thought he could get more coverage than was in Nixon’s bill and he was wrong. He died nearly 40 years later without getting anything passed. By the way, Nixon also passed significant welfare reform while President….It’s well worth noting that Kennedy would have been arrested for (at least) involuntary manslaughter in 1969 for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne in any state but Massachsuetts, but the Kennedys can do no wrong in their home state. Ted was the least capable and arguably least moral of the four Kennedy brothers – and that is saying something.
Regards,
Mike Bosch
US Citizen
Wahroonga, Sydney
[quote]He is on the brink of being the first US president to deliver comprehensive reform of America’s health-care system, a radical change for which he clearly had a mandate[/quote]
“Clearly?” How about, “Not at all”? Please provide one scintilla of evidence that the U.S. electorate was clamoring for government healthcare and that this was a factor in the election.
[quote]Then it moved to Congress, where the Democrats’ ability to stop a Republican filibuster in the Senate is dependent on the vote of the turncoat senator from Connecticut Joe Lieberman[/quote]
Lieberman is an Independent who lost the Democratic nomination but was elected in the general election. How can he be a “turncoat” to a party that rejected [i]him?
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[quote]But even worse was the action of the Republican senator Tom Coburn, who went into the chamber hours before the final vote asking for prayers that a Democrat would not make it to the 1am vote, a clear reference to the ailing 92-year-old senator Robert Byrd, who nevertheless braved the massive snow storm in his wheelchair to be there for the landmark vote[/quote]
What utter trash. A “clear” reference to Byrd? How about a flat tire, bad starter motor, or uncontrollable diarrhea for any other Democrat in the Senate? Why does your mind go for the most nefarious possible explanation? Or is it just the easiest, cheapest shot? Cast your opponent as evil and thus shut down the debate.
You keep using the word “clear.” I do not think it means what you think it means.
A well written piece. Thank you for telling us the other side of this man we always seem to hear adulating stories about. I’d be lucky to get any news critical of Obama from the regular media sources. Now I can see more of the man, rather than the mirage replayed by journalists with no brains and earning their pay the easy way.
The comment about Ted Kennedy blocking Nixon’s health care reform legislation is expanded on here:
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/08/26/echoes-of-kennedy-s-battle-with-nixon-in-health-care-debate.aspx
“Posted Wednesday, August 26, 2009 7:19 PM
Echoes of Kennedy’s Battle With Nixon in Health-Care Debate
Newsweek
By J. Lester Feder
It must pain those fond of Senator Ted Kennedy that his death comes just when the current health-reform effort is threatened by the same kind of attacks that tanked previous efforts. In fact, the Obama health-reform package Kennedy supported in his last days is similar to one Kennedy helped defeat when proposed by President Richard Nixon. If anything, the Obama plan is more conservative. Nixon would have mandated that all employers offer coverage to their employees, while creating a subsidized government insurance program for all Americans that employer coverage did not reach. It would take a miracle to pass such a plan today—a public insurance plan and an employer mandate are two provisions of the proposals now in Congress that are most in doubt.”
To: Mr. Nick Thomson
“Restoring the Constitution” implies it has been violated…If there is no war on terrorism, then the Gitmo detainees are in fact being mis-treated. Those at Gitmo were connected to the deaths of 3,000+ people on 9-11. Was that not an act of war? Giving them civilian trials would have been the equivalent of giving the Nazis civilian trials at Nuremberg.