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Monday, September 14. 2009
President Obama — Top Chef
Last week the president gave his speech before both houses of Congress and the American people. Well, the world actually. Unfortunately for me, I was at my job when it started and didn’t get home until the president — and the Republicans — concluded their remarks. Thanks though to CNN I was able to watch replays of both that night.The president did what he needed to do: unite the Democratic Party. The Republicans did what they’ve been doing since they lost the election in November: cemented their position as the Party of No. And rude behavior.
Republican Congressman Jo Wilson — no relation to the other Joe Wilson — shouted out during the address, “You lie!” when the president said his health care plans did not include providing health care coverage to so-called illegal aliens.
Wilson very publicly apologized to the president, made sure everyone knew he apologized … and then on his website he went back on his apology and said he would not be muzzled. And all of his Republican colleagues are giving him cover.
The Republicans have no alternate plan to what Democrats are offering, although in the Senate Health Committee bill over 80 Republican amendments were added. But, no Republicans on that committee voted for the bill. Their marching orders: Just say “No.”
What the Republicans talk about, and Senator Cornyn of Texas (R) reiterated it on Meet the Press Sunday is, the Democrats are divided. Along with death panels, the “death book” for veterans that supposedly encourages veterans to end their lives — I received that booklet when I had my heart surgery and nowhere in it was I encouraged to kill myself (it gave me information about advanced directives, living wills) — the Democratic plan will outlaw private health care coverage depriving 120 million citizens of health care (it won’t, but the Congressional Budget Office predicts 11 million people would switch from their private plans to the “public option”) and a host of other lies that they know are lies … but they resonate well with the Republican base so they repeat them, looking for solid foundations to their 2010 mid-term election campaigns.Oh, and why it was okay for Congressman Joe Wilson to call the president a liar during his address.
Lawrence O’Donnell was on Morning Joe today (MSNBC) and called out the Republicans for focusing on the lies and “theatrics” of the debate, missing some of the real issues in the House of Representatives Bill that includes a 35% surcharge on health care plans that cost more than $8,000 dollars a year. That could affect a lot of people in this country. Speaking as a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal who believes President Obama is too conservative, O’Donnell should have kept his trap shut on that one.
But, I like Lawrence O’Donnell. He’s one of the few voices in the health care debate who can clearly, succinctly, speak to the issues of the various health care bills, both good and bad, precisely because he’s such a policy nerd, he’s read all the bills that have been proposed so far! That’s like — and I’m guessing here — 6,000 pages of intensely mind-numbing verbosity laden with nomenclature, statistics and numbers beyond the comprehension of most representatives and senators from either party.
Back in the day he was a staffer on the Senate Finance Committee when the Clintons tried to push through their health care plan. It was his job to do all the reading for the members of that committee. Talk about being bookish, but we need people like him. I mean really, who else would read all that! Most Americans these days don’t even read their e-mails, let alone books and bills in Congress! Okay, I know a few people who read graphic novels. They’re always ready to point out the glaring errors in the recent “Dark Knight” movies that are based on the Batman graphic novels.
He’s Batman! Well, he was Batman. Now he’s the Dark Knight. And Batman. Talk about a policy shift. Or character shift.
Dick Armey got a portion of the Republican Base, about 12% of the American population, to show up in Washington, D.C. for a march on Washington. Well, a march against President Obama more precisely. Here’s the funny thing about these people. In one sentence they say the president is the most left-wing socialist president we’ve ever had, which is wrong; that title still belongs to our 32nd President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. And then in the next sentence they compare the president to Adolph Hitler, the best-known fascist in world history. How do you do that without your head exploding?
With considerable ignorance and a certain amount of illiteracy we can imagine. Fascism and Socialism are diametrically opposing political philosophies. The president can be one or the other — he can either emulate Franklin Roosevelt or Adolph Hitler, but he can’t be the incarnation of both. Not at the same time and last I checked President Obama isn’t suffering from a split personality disorder. But I don’t know the president well enough to determine that.
The Republican anti-Obama march on Washington begs the question: they supposedly were protesting economic policies they claim will put the U.S. trillions of dollars in debt. If that’s truly the case (and I doubt it is), why didn’t they march on Washington when President Bush and his Republican allies who controlled government introduced fiscal policies that erased a budget surplus and created a debt of over one trillion dollars? It isn’t about the debt, it’s about a Democrat — a Black man — in the Oval Office.
Do you ever wonder if well-known personalities like the president hear “voices” in their heads? Everyone I know hears those voices, telling us to be good or satisfy our personal desires, like masturbating to pictures of Padma Lakshmi is good and bad (we all seem to have competing voices) not that I have ever done that. She’s one of the hosts of the Bravo program, Top Chef.
She’s actually posed for many a photo sans clothing. Her main claim to fame, before Top Chef, was being the wife of author Salman Rushdie. At least that’s what I knew about her before Top Chef.But I digress. It isn’t really voices we hear in our heads, it’s our thoughts. We have competing ideas on how to live, what to do, and who to do it to, or with. We make decisions based on our intellectual knowledge and instinctual desires and most often it’s those two sides of our humanity that clash in our thoughts.
People like the president can compartmentalize their thoughts. People like me, and you know who you are, we just let our thoughts mingle in a mob of unruly insanity, pulling us every which way but forward. It’s why many of us find it hard to get anything accomplished.
Anyway, I’m done. Gotta be to work in about seven hours and it’s time to sleep … after I check out some photos I found of Padma Lakshmi — just for educational purposes.
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