Barack Obama’s Enemies Numerous in Health Care Fight

When President Barack Obama delivered his riveting address to Congress about the dire need for health care reform, there were two main lines of  thought that came to my mind.

1.)    Regarding his speech: the prose was moving, his delivery strong, and the stump speech style examples of everyday people destroyed by the current health care status quo were indeed apt and perfectly relevant.

2.)    He has a LOT of enemies in his battle for true reform. Polls show ¾ or more of the American populace want drastic health care reform NOW, and the fact that it hasn’t happened yet shows that he indeed has a powerful cadre of enemies blocking his way. Here are a few:

-The lunatic wing of the GOP: Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Monica Crowley, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage.  These “members of the media” routinely espouse ideas that no sane rational person could actually believe. They’re simply TV versions of radio “shock jocks,” saying anything and everything for the simple purpose of getting people to talk about them and increase their ratings.  And the rest of the mainstream media MUST stop giving them that attention.

I’ll be the first to admit that MSNBC is left in its bias, just like Fox is far right, but I can’t agree with the way MSNBC covers the health care debate. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow  need to stop devoting so much of their shows to telling us what guano crazy and/or racist things Beck, Limbaugh et al said on a given day. Don’t bother being a watchdog on these loons, just ignore them; eventually sponsors will pull their ads from their shows, and they will simply go away.

-The mainstream media. The coverage of the health care debate reminds me of how global warming was covered 5 or 6 years ago- the extreme obsession to remain “fair and balanced” and give both sides equal time. Maybe they should rent “Good Night and Good Luck?” Like legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow said, (when portrayed by David Stratharin) “there are not two sides to every issue.” Would the MSM give equal time to the child molestor? The “birthers” and the “death panel” idiots have no merit or salient points in their arguments; why give them air time?

-Sarah Palin. We learned in 2008 that she’s a shallow, superficial idiot. This year we learned she has no grip on reality. So she wrote some aimless, pointless diatribe about fictional “death panels” on her Facebook page? WHO CARES!! Yes, she’s slightly attractive, very photogenic, and therefore a ratings generator for television news- so what? She’s not even employed and quit her office- in mid term! She’s irrelevant, and Palin is to politics what Anna Nicole Smith was to Hollywood: a fluke, a waste of space, and a celebrity famous for doing nothing. Let’s all start “Forgetting Sarah Palin.” I’d criticize Minnesota congresswoman Michelle Bachmann for her ridiculous positions, but that’s just too easy.

-The healthcare-industrial complex. United Healthcare, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield and others. sent their employees, and also hired some weirdoes to spend the entire summer shouting down Democratic congressmen during their town hall meetings. Some of these mercenaries were even dumb enough to make themselves obvious by wearing their corporate polos to these meetings. Others were delusional enough to give the “Nazi” label to an African-Amercian (Obama) and a homosexual Jew (Rep. Barney Frank). So that shows extreme desperation on the verbal assailants’ part.

Essentially the health care debate comes down to this. It’s the CEOs/Board of Directors of the largest/most profitable health care companies and professional associations versus the rest of America. Or at least it should be, as long as we can stop the message from consistently being hijacked by the lunatic fringe elements. Either way, this is a fight that Obama, and most Americans CAN and SHOULD win.     

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