In politics nothing is said to the public by accident. It is true that people do mis-speak and misinterpret policy, but when the person who mis-speaks is the author of the policy then, as the expression goes, "Houston, we've got a problem."
You have to keep asking yourself, "Why does the President keep trying to appease the Republicans when it has been obvious from day one that they would support nothing coming from the Obama White House?"
Then you have to ask yourself, who is it that Obama is trying to appease. The Republicans? Or us? The back and forth, up and down the block, and around the corner with the healthcare debate, add this, subtract that so in the end the majority of the people, including its supporters, will have no idea what is actually in the bill. Hypothetically, with or without the public option, if it is passed and signed into law the congressional elections will have come and gone before it takes affect.
For those of you with health insurance, you will never know the difference. For those without, who will be the watchdog? How will we grade the effort? How will we know the difference? Do I trust the President? I want to. Do I trust the Congress? Oh, hell no! As Harry Truman once said, "For the first six months in the Senate you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here."
We have a state insurance commissioner running for governor, and you just take three guesses where the majority of his campaign funds are coming from. We have two, count 'em, two, United States Supreme Court Justices who ruled in the dissenting opinion in the Troy Davis case that just because new evidence is discovered after you've been convicted of murder and sentenced to death, that that, in and of itself, is no reason to set aside the verdict. After all, you were convicted kind of fair and somewhat square, and hey, the law is the law!
Unless, that is, unless they don't want to follow the law. Both of these two Justices, Scalia and Thomas, had immediate family members working in the Bush campaign in 2000, Scalia's son and Thomas's wife. Yet both voted in favor of the Bush campaign when they should have recused themselves. In a clear conflict of interest they voted to overturn the Constitution which gives the states the power to run their own elections. But in the ruling they were quick to add, just this once! Until that day I had never heard of a law representing justice that ended with "just this once."
But now Scalia and Thomas hold that the procedure of the law is more important than the people it is designed to protect. That it is better to murder a possibly innocent man than to offend the dignity of the court. That is one of the most patently offensive things I've ever heard in my life; yet these are the people who rule over us. People who authorize the spending of billions upon billions of dollars to build a missile defense shield that doesn't work. They never ask questions like, "Will this bankrupt the treasury?" and then they authorize its deployment by pointing it at countries who are not threatening us and then answer in their own defense, "No, this is pointed at the country behind you."
These are not peaceful intents; there are no benevolent intentions here. The intent is to reignite the cold war because it helps those people who write the checks. That would be the defense contractors who build billion dollar plastic airplanes that fly slower than a commercial jet. Aircraft so frail that they can't be kept outside for fear that they would melt in the sun so must be kept in air-conditioned hangars to protect them. Aircraft too valuable to risk in true combat as their non-nuclear bomb load cannot inflict as much damage as their loss. Aircraft that can't do the same job as a B-52 built fifty years before and at a fraction of the cost.
It has all become a grotesque clown show of political posturing and sycophantic murderous rage. The President assures us that it is vital to send more soldiers to fight wars against third world people in mud huts. Despite all of our bombs and missiles and rockets and aircraft carriers and spy satellites, we're still not safe, and they'll get us if we don't watch out! The President is briefed daily by generals and admirals with charts and graphs with forecasts of immanent doom or immanent victory, depending on what the generals are asking for. Cost is never a factor and never matters in the final decision, but when it comes to the health care of the American people, money is the only thing that matters.
The news media spotlights the gun nuts and knuckle draggers as if they have a legitimate point of view. As if they aren't part of the problem, but it makes for damn good TV! Ratings, ratings, ratings, but now thousands lining up for free healthcare in Kentucky and Los Angeles, and gee, that's kind of depressing, isn't it? No story there, thousands of poor, suffering people begging for a modicum of care, eyeglasses, tooth extractions and mammograms. The reason that it is soft-peddled is because it is a national disgrace and violates America's first propaganda principle. America is the greatest country in the world, and we're always right! If we drop bombs on you, you deserve it, and if you can't afford eyeglasses or a mammogram, that's your fault.
So the question comes back to me, do I trust the President? I want to" but this President promised on the campaign trail to end these wars and has done the opposite. He promised to support the Employee's Free Choice Act but sat silently as the Senators from Wal-Mart gutted it. He promised a new transparency, but instead we get the new secrecy. When the banks were in trouble he warned that we must act immediately. With record unemployment and calls for a second stimulus bill the President says, "Let's wait and see."
The President, addressing the VFW convention, said the following:
"As President, my greatest responsibility is the security and safety of the American people. As I've said before, that is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, it's the last thing that I think about when I go to sleep at night. And I will not hesitate to use force to protect the American people or our vital interests.
"And that's why I have made this pledge to our armed forces: I will only send you into harm's way when it is absolutely necessary. And when I do, it will be based on good intelligence and guided by a sound strategy. I will give you a clear mission, defined goals, and the equipment and support you need to get the job done.
"Which brings me to our second responsibility to our armed forces -- giving them the resources and equipment and strategies to meet their missions. We need to keep our military the best-trained, the best-led, the best-equipped fighting force in the world. And that's why, even with our current economic challenges, my budget increases defense spending.
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