For those of you who have not seen this, please listen to Obama’s speech on health care:
Now, please, do not conclude that I am posting this speech here because I suddenly became an Obama-groupie. Not at all. I know full well that Obama is a puppet in the hands of backstage puppeteers, and don’t believe in his health care plan at all (I favor the single payer solution). No, what I want to draw your attention to are Obama’s truly extraordinary oratory skills, and the fact that for the first time in years he is openly challenging the kind of ideological crap which the so-called “conservatives” have been spewing about ‘liberal values’.
Not since Reagan has an American president spoken with such convincing power. And unlike Regan, I get a strong sense that Obama actually understands what he is saying.
For some of us, this is good news a, .at this point, *any* improvement in the backward and barbaric US “health(not)care” system would be a tremendous relief for millions of people. But this is also very bad news for the rest of planet.
First, in Obama we are faced with a formidable US President who will be extremely skilled in making his case. Following 8 years of truly simian buffoonery this is a radical shift. Just remember how Obama cynically (also but very skillfully) asked how those who traditionally oppose US interventions in Latin America how they now could accuse the USA of not intervening enough in Honduras. This is a fallacy, of course, but it sounds terrific.
On substance, what we are seeing in Obama is mostly a 3rd Bush term. Simply put – almost nothing has changed: the Neocon Israeli Lobby still runs the USA, the USA still fights several imperial wars, the so-called “nuclear shield” in Europe is still on the table, as is the war with Iran, the USA still openly supports the Ukraine and Georgia, and Uncle Shmuel still spies on its citizens with impunity. But the style has changed tremendously and we should not under-estimate the difficulty which this new reality will present to the peace movement worldwide.
It was easy to hate Dubya. It is hard not to like Obama. And for most people, that will be a key factor in defining their stance towards US policies domestically and/or abroad.
Just imagine how convincing Obama will sound when the Empire decides to strike at Iran or Venezuela…
With Obama in power, the piece movement is in deep deep trouble, I am afraid.
The Saker
Actually passing any of the bills that exist in Congress will
1) make health care more expensive
2) be a huge windfall for the corporate forces that constitute the medical industrial complex
No bill is better than what’s on offer. Forcing people to buy health insurance (with taxpayer dollars) is no solution.
I’ve written a few posts now about Obama and the health care debate in my own blog.
Saker,
I haven’t had the patience to sit through the speach, †hough I’m certainly aware Obama is a magnificent orator. You need not convince me this is a smarter, more eloquent Bush.
Still, he will not be able to convince the world its ok to attack Iran or Venezuela. (This is not to say he wont anyway)
Indeed, I doubt he will persuade either Russia or China into any meaningful sanctions against Iran. Europe more likely, but they were in America’s pocket to begin with.
He will however, be able to convince the American ‘left’ to go along with any war plan. They will then go on their blogs and talk about how his wars are “totally different” than the Bush wars. “How can you even compare?”
Still, American foreign policy has been stymied by more than a bad personality. We have not yet attacked Iran because there are real consequences for doing so. Georgia and Ukraine will not be in NATO because Europe doesn’t want it and Russia has the means to stop it.
Also, after a while, Obama’s charm starts to look too clever by half.
P.S. I agree with Binh
That anonymous was me
The globalist have a winner in Obama. And why shouldn’t they? They paid for, brought him up and trained him to be where he is and chose him to do the final job of dismantling the Republic of The United States of America. Slick?, you bet he is smooth and slick!
Collectivism will be the new Communism that all the US must embrace or risk being held as an enemy combatant. Taking over the health care is Fabian Socialism at its best.
It shouldn’t be called health care any more but forced care because if the bureaucrats decide what treatment you must get, and you decline, or disagree, they will drop you from the care altogether. Once they have it in their control, the sky is the limit to what they can do.
May God have mercy on us all.
From deep in the heart of Texas
The peace movement sure is quiet about Af-Pak war.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Obama is NO DIFFERENT, from the tyrannical opportunists that came before him.
He hasn’t done anything fundamentally different from Bush…despite making nice speeches in order to camouflage the ongoing brutality of America’s occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
@Everybody: thanks for your comments, friends. I want to make two small points here:
a) if we call what Obama is doing “Socialism’ then we also have to admit that the entire industrialized world is ‘Socialist’ and that, in turn, makes the concept of ‘Socialist’ rather meaningless. Then ‘Socialism’ means ‘industrialized’ or ‘non-utopian’. Seriously, the US socio-economic system is much more accurately described by the word ‘Fascist’ (socialized costs, privatized benefits) or ‘Turbocapitalist’ (hyper-deregulated as per Luttwak’s definition and book). I don’t think that using the word ‘Socialist’ is helpful in this context.
b)I would like to clarify one thing here: I believe that there is a greater chance for an operation (not necessarily a full-scale military attack) against Venezuela than a military attack against Iran. The Empire absolutely and emphatically cannot allow the highly successful Venezuelan model (Bolivarian Socialism – here the term *does* apply) to continue to “infect” (as they would put it, the rest of Latin America. If only the Israel Lobby wants a war against Iran, ALL of the elite constituents of the Empire NEED Chavez to be stopped.
The Saker
I find myself praying for oil back above 100. It greatly limits the empire’s room for maneuver and helps Iran and Venezuela withstand sanctions. The Honduras coup is disconcerting. Having gotten away with it they’ll be encouraged to try it elswhere.
Most of Europe is socialist and they seem to be doing fine. I don’t know where this built in fear of any ism besides capitalism comes from. It’s like the people who have never left America and seen other countries but yet proclaim how the US is the greatest country in the world. As for health care I don’t want the same government that handled Katrina doing my healthcare. People didn’t want gov healthcare under Hillary and Slick Willie and they don’t want it now.