Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: Monkeyleg on June 16, 2009, 11:22:50 PM
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I just heard this afternoon that next week NBC, ABC and CBS will all be airing thinly-disguised infomercials for Obama's health care proposals. There won't be any time alloted for opposing opinions.
This just about makes it official: the networks are now an arm of the administration.
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This just about makes it official: the networks are now an arm of the administration.
I'm not sure "arm" is the correct name of the organ.
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How is this different from the Fireside Chats?
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How is this different from the Fireside Chats?
Broadcasting the words of a President, which are obviously his views and plans, is different from broadcasting those same views and plans under the guise of news and impartiality. A political speech given by the president is one thing. The content of that speech given by the "news" as some sort of impartial documentary is something else completely.
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This ought to remove any lingering doubts that the dominant news media is, as Bernie Goldberg put it, in a slobbering love affair with Obama. :mad:
They've become nothing more than the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party.
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A 1.6 Trillion dollar informmercial.
Maybe they need to bring in Billy Mays to pitch it.
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Obama healthcare is the first thing to deeply scare me.
Everything, so far, has been pretty temporary. Even the take over of the car companies -- no one is (yet) forcing you to buy cars for everyone, and you still have Ford who will come out on top of this thing. Except for the secured investor / bond holder fiasco, but this is working its way through the SCOTUS, and it is hard for me to imagine that the same group of justices that saw Heller through wouldn't see this one correctly. Even the massive printing of money is temporary.
However, this Obama plan seems to be aimed at destroying private insurance companies, controlling physicians and annihilating the structure of the healthcare system in the US. "Everybody in, nobody out".
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This has been in development for forty years; we should not be surprised. The "elites" in America are, like Obama, "on a mission from God." Many of them--and I speak from personal knowledge of some in key roles--are eternal Mississippi "freedom riders" for whom Obama is the final manifestation of the civil rights movement and must not and cannot be denied.
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There is nothing that cannot be rolled back, although like the stock market sometimes you don't have an actual plummet, just a protracted erosion, a running-in-place whlle the fundamentals slowly crumble.
The people who will be most affected by this "revolution" have yet to get it and have yet to speak out. That we are seriously contemplating gutting the best health care and medical system in history to service a small percentage of Americans--workers between jobs, young people who'd rather spend that premium money on something more fun, and illegal aliens and their offspring--is a tribute to the compelling power of Disinformation in the 21st century.
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It just doesn't seem pragmatic to change -- how do you justify taking away "health" from those who cannot afford to pay? Seems like political and social suicide. You'd be demonized.
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This will end when a critical mass of audience just stop looking and listening and caring--and that's already in process. Just say NO.
As the Left infiltrates more and more of America's core institutions more and more Americans will just tune them out, and we will have two Americas, one "in the light" and one in "shadow." The Founding Fathers wanted all of it out in the open, but that can't work when you lose transparency, representation, and integrity.
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Longeyes, GM and Chrysler can be sold. "Shovel-ready" make-work projects can be canceled. A new entitlement program like "free" health insurance, though, would be nearly impossible to cancel. Once a large segment of the population is accustomed to getting health care at no cost, the program will become another third rail of politics, just like Social Security. I would bet that it would only take a couple of years before "free" health care would be untouchable.
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It's certainly true that stopping a runaway train produces sparks, but there's a lot of complacency about what all of the Obama Deal policies, if enacted whole, will mean for the average American's daily life. Those that still retain some memory of The Way We Were may yet rue the world ahead and demand roll-backs, or...we may just go de facto broke and join the fabled brigades of people pushing wheelbarrows of currency to the local ObamaMart for their ration of breadsticks and gruel. We are not just looking at higher taxes, we are looking at a convulsive metamorphosis of what it means to live in America, and that hasn't sunk into the American cranium by a long shot.
I guess we'll see.
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Once a large segment of the population is accustomed to getting health care at no cost, the program will become another third rail of politics, just like Social Security. I would bet that it would only take a couple of years before "free" health care would be untouchable.
The problem with this is that, when left alone, the status-quo expands. As long as programs like Social Security and other entitlement programs remain in place, they provide encouragement for other entitlement programs to be created - and even if you beat off this attempt at creating an American NHS, a new one will be tried in a year, and the next election cycle, and the ext after that. Even under "moderate" Administrations, the creep continues.
You have two choices: attack the status quo, or be gradually smothered by the creeping socialism.
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What's wrong with universal health care besides the obvious?
I think we could use some changes in our system, but small tweaks, not massive overhauls that will lock us in for the rest of this country's and citizens' lives.
Taking away incentive for doctors/scientists to do well = bad.
Mandating coverage available to everyone in the country by forcing businesses to comply and scaring away private companies = bad.
Sacrificing good health care for efficiency/cost effectiveness = bad.
Knowing that all the folks who don't pay taxes will still qualify for the health care = bad.
What am I missing?
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I read once that the FDA tacks on hundreds of millions of dollars onto the cost of new medicine by requiring the procedures already in use elsewhere be tested again and again. Now obviously it makes snese when something hasn't been tried before outside the borders of some silly place like Namibia, but if a medicine has passed the approval process in European countries, it may make sense to allow the manufacturer to avoid jumping through the same hoops again. But again I am not knowledgeable about the subject.
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The people who will be most affected by this "revolution" have yet to get it and have yet to speak out. That we are seriously contemplating gutting the best health care and medical system in history to service a small percentage of Americans--workers between jobs, young people who'd rather spend that premium money on something more fun, and illegal aliens and their offspring--is a tribute to the compelling power of Disinformation in the 21st century.
The people who will be most affected can't speak out. The one I take care of is 20 months old and has no idea some jackasses are ruining her future.
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This just about makes it official: the networks are now an arm Lewinski of the administration.
Fixed for truth.... =|
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What scares me is people who give in to the claim of permanence of any government program. Can't implement government health insurance because once in place it will be a third rail of politics. No go on carbon taxation . . . . . Just name the initiative and you can find someone who will cite its permanence. Let us keep one thing in mind as we watch the devolution of the republic. The fight has evolved into a political knife fight. And Rule One of a knife fight is everyone gets cut. No one walks out without damage.
The only factor to be considered is what participants have to show for having engaged in the knife fight. It will be possible to unwind governmental health insurance. Remember please, our current health care mess is a direct consequence of decision made during WWII and subsequently ratified many times. Congress made the mess and congress can fix the mess with a few well-thought out decisions. Will people be hurt? Yup! Should we delay or avoid doing what is necessary because someone will get hurt? Nope. What it takes is a willingness to engage in creative destruction of the status quo. Enough for now.
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Sorry Charby, he's for the compitition:
Billy Mays video. (http://www.youtube.com/v/c7d85T4OfqA&hl=en&fs=1&)
Waitone; what decisions are those? I confess beyond knowing that I have what I consider good healthcare, and a kinda kneejerk "Don't let .gov touch it!!" reaction I'm not real familiar with the "crisis". We've got what, 16% or so uninsured, (or on Medicare) at least some of which are there by choice. Everyone else seems to go to the doctor when they need to. What problem exactly are we "fixing"?
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We've got what, 16% or so uninsured, (or on Medicare) at least some of which are there by choice.
I'd wager that many/most of the uninsured are noncitizens here illegally...
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I am not in the don't let the .gov government touch it crowd. I think something needs to be done, the system as we have it right now, is really silly.
However, what Obama proposes (so far, though his details are quite vague) appears to be an attempt to undercut and pushout the big insurance companies by "creating competition with the federal government." No one can compete with an entity that can regulate other the competition and operate at major losses. The current cost projections make the cost of covering people who are currently un(der)insured as costing more than what it would cost to just give them a private policy now -- typical fed.gov.
I don't think that it is absolutely irreversible, but I think it is pragmatically irreversible.
As was stated, they are only now getting around to fixing problems from WWII, when will they get around to fixing this one?
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Waitone; what decisions are those? I confess beyond knowing that I have what I consider good healthcare, and a kinda kneejerk "Don't let .gov touch it!!" reaction I'm not real familiar with the "crisis". We've got what, 16% or so uninsured, (or on Medicare) at least some of which are there by choice. Everyone else seems to go to the doctor when they need to. What problem exactly are we "fixing"?
From what I have been able to gather from those supporting government-run healthcare (and claim they don't want that), the problem is those uninsured. NOT that they can't get healthcare, but that it's just far too expensive a way to get healthcare from emergency rooms.
Also, they seem to think that, in general, we just pay too much for healthcare.
So, their solution is to get the government to spend EVEN MORE on healthcare, because that will lower costs.
Because, of course, the government is the model of efficiency and frugality.
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Our system would be far less expensive if it weren't for Medicare/Medicaid/all the other fed.gov interference/illegal aliens sucking billions out of the system. Oddly, I'd be very happy to see a carbon copy of Australia's medical system adopted. While they do have .gov healthcare, it's a separate system that you can opt out of and there is a free market alternative untainted by the filthy hands of .gov. People who say they have evil socialist healthcare are merely showcasing their ignorance of how much our fed.gov already influences ie hurts healthcare in this country.
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The problem we're fixing is that too many people think for themselves. That's not part of the master plan, so Obama figures to take care of that for us.
We're now on the brink of gutting the best medical care system in history for the sake of workers between jobs, 20-somethings who think they have better things to spend money on, and a steadily growing number of illegal aliens and their offspring who, we are told, are somehow also "Americans" despite their illegality.
We ought to be using this "crisis" as a teachable moment about how this issue is being framed and what really underlies it. Bad judicial decisions based on a misguided notion of "compassion" have created an absurd situation with our ER facilities being abused to the point of wide insolvency (and Obama's solution is to drain down another $200 billion from hospitals, he tells us). Too many young people are proving they have more self-esteem than self-responsibility. As for the illegal aliens, no one here needs to be told that this is arguably the greatest "systemic risk" our society now faces (other than overt foreign terrorism) and that unless we deal with its enablers, both in government and business, we are going to lose this nation in short order.
If we still had a journalism corps that had any interest in objective reporting the American people might understand how they are being scammed, but instead we're going to get informercials from the White House.
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I'd wager that many/most of the uninsured are noncitizens here illegally...
Some are. Others are self-insured, between jobs (not unemployed but actually transitioning), have decided not to pay for health care as they are young and don't see a need, or can't get health coverage because companies won't touch them due. All of these get lumped into the "no insurance" bracket to elevate it from a nationally insignificant number to "it's a crisis!"
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As for the MSM being part of selling the screwing of America, let them know how you feel. More importantly, let their sponsors, the producers of shows that air on those networks, etc. know.
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Obama healthcare is the first thing to deeply scare me.
Everything, so far, has been pretty temporary. Even the take over of the car companies -- no one is (yet) forcing you to buy cars for everyone, and you still have Ford who will come out on top of this thing. Except for the secured investor / bond holder fiasco, but this is working its way through the SCOTUS, and it is hard for me to imagine that the same group of justices that saw Heller through wouldn't see this one correctly. Even the massive printing of money is temporary.
However, this Obama plan seems to be aimed at destroying private insurance companies, controlling physicians and annihilating the structure of the healthcare system in the US. "Everybody in, nobody out".
sorry, but =| (http://www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC-SCOTUS-Examiner~y2009m6d5-Challenge-to-illegal-Chrysler-bailout--takeover-rebuffed-Pension-funds-to-appeal-to-Supreme-Court?cid=exrss-DC-SCOTUS-Examiner)
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Why did you post old news?
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Why did you post old news?
meds musta been in high gear =(
edit: i think this is what i was looking for :angel: (http://origin.www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/08a1096.htm)
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You could solve the health care crisis without creating any new bureaucracy or taxes by simply letting doctors and hospitals deduct care of no-pay patients from their income tax as a business loss.
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Does anyone really think BHO has any desire to reduce bureaucracy in any way?
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meds musta been in high gear =(
edit: i think this is what i was looking for :angel: (http://origin.www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/08a1096.htm)
I was aware of this, but I am of the understanding just the stay was denied, because of lack of evidence supporting damage (something about since the sale was not yet complete, maybe they would, in the end, get a higher price for the stock).
However, the case should itself was not decided -- and that is the important one.
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I was aware of this, but I am of the understanding just the stay was denied, because of lack of evidence supporting damage (something about since the sale was not yet complete, maybe they would, in the end, get a higher price for the stock).
However, the case should itself was not decided -- and that is the important one.
Ah, i thought it was over. =| Its good to know it isn't yet, maybe the US will pull through :angel: