Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The All Clear Has Sounded

Yesterday, I heard for the first time on NPR about how the public option has "widespread public support." Here's Melissa Block on Tuesday's ATC:
"Senators on the finance committee defeated attempts to add the government run option to health care legislation - that's despite the fact that it has widespread public support beyond Capitol Hill."
Talk about too little, too late. All summer while rabies was sweeping townhalls and tea parties, NPR never mentioned "widespread public support." I guess once the Insurocrats have passed their pharma/insurance industry overhall and Pres. Obama has signed it, NPR will also mention that other thingy that has wide public support...uh...what do you call that...oh, yeah, single payer.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

"All clear!"

Hilarious, MTW.

That pretty well sums it up.

Even more hilarious is the reporting by some that the defeat in the Senate Committee somehow (in a twisted way only Washingtonians could understand and appreciate) signals that the Public option is gaining support in Congress!

Incidentally, how many people REALLY believe that Baucus is going against the wishes of his President?

The actual deal was consummated some time ago with the CEO's of insurance companies and Bill Tauzin of PhRMA. What we are seeing now is simply for show to make it look like there was a "battle" for the public option but that it simply did not have the votes to pass (60, of course, to end a filibuster, you know)

Do these folks in our government think most members of the public are stupid?

Apparently so -- and judging by the way the public allowed the trillion dollar robbery of the public coffers to feed Wall Street bonuses, mergers, shareholders (pretty much everything except increased lending) our "leaders" might be right in their assessment of the public's collective intelligence.

RepubLiecan said...

Indeed, NPR must figure the public option is now dead, so it's safe to report on how much support there is for among the little people. Just watch how they will report it was the Democrat's fault for not listening to the voters, when they lose a lot of ground to us Republiecans in 2010. This has been extremely easy for us Republiecans, all we had to do was nothing, except for spreading a few lies and distortions which is like breathing to us. The Democrats have been so cooperative by being Republiecan lite in serving the interests of corporate/health insurance/PhARMA complex rather than the citizens.

All that browbeating of the media for being liberal and biased is sure paying off now.

JayV said...

And yesterday on Hear and Now, Robin Young chatted with a Mark Halperin from Time magazine, who called Baucus a moderate Democrat. I don't think so.
http://www.hereandnow.org/2009/09/rundown-929/
Anyone hear that interview?

larry, dfh said...

JayV, e-mail her. She reads her mail and does respond. She even admits when she's wrong.

Anonymous said...

This has always been about getting that 47m co-hort in the grip of insurance companies. Always was!!!

Obama is in the pockets of those companies (10+m in contributions).

edk

Woody (Tokin Librul/Rogue Scholar/ Helluvafella!) said...

If NPR is in on the post-mortem, I'm absolutely CERTAIN anything like a 'meaningful" public option is as dead as Dan Schorr's libido...

Anonymous said...

Baucus a moderate Democrat."

A "moderate Democrat" is someone who only took 1 million dollars from the insurance companies as opposed to 3 million like Baucus.

I'd say that Baucus is moderately Democratic, if that (and very un-democratic, based on the way he has conducted the whole health care debate, not even allowing single payer reps to speak at his hearing, where instead they were arrested!)

Woody (Tokin Librul/Rogue Scholar/ Helluvafella!) said...

Y'all seem not to get it.

Obama's a sacrificial lamb, offered on the altar of fickle, racist public opinion to absorb, take responsibility for, and become the face of ALL the Bushevik fuck-ups that neither he nor anyone could begin to repair.

His job is to absorb all the immanent fear, hatreds, resentments, and psychoses fostered by the last 30 years of fascist coup d'etat, put a (Half-black) Dim face on them, and prepare the way for the arrival of the Xisto-fascisti--Huckabee? Palin?--in the next cycle...

geoff said...

"All clear!" was what I was thinking when I heard the results of the NPR/Kaiser poll and the attendant "non scientific" poll reported on ME this AM. They actually allowed someone to say "health insurance/industrial complex." People are mad as hell about being rolled over by big money and the propagandists bought at NPR.

In the story, Rovner reports that "about half of the people polled thought that interest groups have too narrow of a focus and they shouldn't be at the table, on the other hand [there's always another bloody hand, isn't there, Lady Macbeth?] about half thought that health insurance interest groups have a really important perspective to add and that they play an important role and they should be at the table."

But when you look at the poll itself, you see that, of the 12 groups asked about, only "the media" [yes, that's you NPR] fairs worse than the insurance companies in a measure of whether their influence is too little or too large.

NPR quickly recovered from the polling spinning and got back to its normal compass pointing by having Mara Liaison do clean up. I forget what she said, but the gist was that private profiteering insurers are the only proper arbiters of who gets care. Strangely, when you search NPR's new-fangled web site for Mara on ME today, nothing comes up.

Life As I Know It Now said...

It's getting to where I hate all them politicians, sell outs and liars that they are.

Anonymous said...

Y'all seem not to get it.

Obama's a sacrificial lamb,"

sacrificial lamb, my **s.

Obama is going along with this whole thing willingly.

No one forced him to take millions of dollars in contributions during his campaign from health insurance companies and big pharma.

No one forced him to jettison single payer (his main bargaining chip) at the getgo.

No one forced him to make (back room) deals with PhRMA's Bill Tauzin and insurance company execs.

No one forced him to sit idly by while Max Baucus and others set the agenda and spout their nonsense.

For that matter, no one forced Obama to even make health care an issue right off the bat.

He chose to do all those things.

Sure Obama has a huge amount of well financed opposition -- and, yes that opposition is often racist -- but anyone who expected otherwise has to be living on another planet.

Obama can not be blamed for the opposition, but he CAN be blamed for his willingness to give in at nearly every juncture.

No significant change was EVER brought about through the kind of "compromise" (giveaway) that Obama has been engaging in.