Liberals don't take the hint very well. After pushing for a government-run medical insurance company, Barack Obama has seen his poll numbers drop and his foot-soldiers in Congress get treated in their town hall meetings like the guy with a Red Sox hat at Yankee stadium. Still, he pushes for the wildly unpopular "public option," even if he dresses it up in another name or tweaks minor aspects of it. This shouldn't surprise. From Harry Truman to Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton, Democratic presidents have raised the idea of widespread nationalized healthcare only to have it rejected out of hand. But every generation, along comes a guy like Barack Obama, who interprets America's past rejection of socialized medicine as an inarticulate demand for it. Misread America's pulse at your own peril, Dr. Obama.

Wow. Obviously, you've only had tequila at frat parties and as an end of a drunken night nigh-cap. A properly aged tequila is as delicious as a fine kentucky bourbon. As the gentleman before mentioned - it was the fav of john wayne. It might be unpatriotic not to enjoy a fine anjeo.

Mr. Obama should really be working on improving the economy, improving America's image abroad, and finding a way to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This would resonate better with the American people. This is why they elected him in the first place.

The problem with trying to tackle health care reform right now is not that there are not some problems that need to be addressed. There clearly are. Most Americans are aware of this, however, while they are aware of this, on the whole, most Americans are quite happy with the health care they currently have. The concern is that Mr. Obama's plan would "throw the baby out with the bath water" so to speak. As such, they are not going along with it.

Mr. Obama and his team could improve the economy by: 1.)reduce the corporate income tax rate from 35% (the world's highest) to 10% and 2.)allow for fully expensing of all capital assets including real esatate purchases. These two things would have an enormous benefit to the economy. Will Mr. Obama and his team implement such a solution? Based on their actions to dated, probally not but if they could improve the economy then they could get nationalized health care. As a former President said, "its all about the economy stupid." He was right. It really is all about the economy.

I don;t know how the Tequila post got in here, but that guy is dead wrong. Tequila will never compare to Bourbon, America's Whiskey!!

Mike: I have blogged on how wretchedly disgusting Tequilla is on several occasions. It is a fitting last name for that walking warning against gonhorrea who used to host a reality/dating show on MTV. The comments on those posts are closed. So, perhaps, the pro-Tequilla poster without a thread above just was reacting to an outdated thread. That's the most sense that I can make of it. Here, if anyone cares, are a couple of my posts articulating just how gross Tequilla really is....

http://www.flynnfiles.com/archives/pop_culture2006/the_black_sheep_of_liquors.html

http://www.flynnfiles.com/archives/pop_culture2006/the_big_five_labor_day_booze_countdown.html

Now back to your regularly scheduled post.

Dan, It's not that Obama can't take a hint. Obama knows the American public is against him- HE DOES NOT CARE! Bottom line is this guy wants control and it has little if anything to do with the mood of the electorate. Obama is a fascist and sees his election as an opportunity to impliment his vision (an anti-American one at that) and is not at all concerned about his popularity (at least not in the sense of it being a game changing factor-sure he would like to be popular but...) In other words Obama is No Clinton with his finger to the wind seeking to find the most popular wind to lean into to maintain power(while still considering himself a progressive). No, Obama in my view is a total ideologue with an unshakable faith in fascist power which he craves.--I really believe Conservatives make a mistake when they think along the lines of this guy being a typical pol. He is gonna try and ram this through I believe (hope I am wrong!) and I see little evidence of the normal -"politician meet the pols" exercise. All those years with Jeremiah (not the biblical prophet) were not irrelevent.

I just read Thomas Sowell's latest column. This stuff wouldn't go in effect until 2013!!!

Too important to delay? Too important to read? Too important to be debated in committee? Nobody will feel the effects of this plan for "Four More Years!

"HCAN has "NOW" in its name? Nobody will "reap" the benefits of this plan for four years!! Obama has indicated that part of his plan to address the woeful economy if to start to "bend the curve down" but he doesn't mention that he's not going to start bending it for four years.

To ana1yze polls or public opinion one has to fully understand the methodology being used to draw an accurate picture or conclusion. To say that the public does not support a public, democratized health option is an outright lie and those on the right propagating it know full well it is a lie. Shamefully and despicably, these lies, as has been proven repeatedly by multiple think tanks and organizations (kff.org is a good start) are helping perpetuate death and suffering (18,000/year dead due to lack of access, thousands more due to rescission and denial by private tyrannies). What's most pathetic is that these lies being perpetrated aren't even followed by valid, honest policy proposals from the right to reform health care, which a vast, overwhelming majority of the public desperately needs and demands politically. Mainstream conservatives stand firmly behind death and suffering, carrying the water for the coporate tyrannies and their government allies that have murdered millions and stolen trillions from the public (conservatives love big government when it involves Wall Street bailouts, false imprisonment, police brutality, and military atrocities). History will speak clearly on this servile obstruction and the verdict will be devastating.

The most shocking element of this "debate" or disagreement is that the democrats in congress and it seems similarly in the White House stand firmly behind the elite private tyrannies. Subsidies for pharmaceutical giants, which escalated dramatically due to Bush administration and congressional republican collusion, will continue unabated and probably continue skyrocketing. Health insurance goliaths will continue to charge more and deliver less, exacerbating the strain on small businesses and the American taxpayer (again, this is fully supported by supposedly small government conservatives). These are the results of the Obama administration and congressional democrats, the same results you'd see being produced by a Bush administration and congressional republicans. Only the rhetoric is different and the botched and bungled Limbaughs and Becks of the world are too blinded by their hatred (and perhaps cognitive deficiencies) to understand it.

Lastly, it's worth noting how despicable and hypocritical conservative seniors have been throughout the public discourse. Seniors receive single-payer universal government-funded health care, that same care that 60% of them don't want others to have (according to the rightist Scott Rasmussen). That they don't even realize they have government-funded universal single-payer health care is pathetic. If they know that and still want to deny others the same care they receive as wards of the American taxpayer (essentially free-loading welfare cases; check John Stossels "Greedy Geezers" piece), Jesus would have a word to describe them, and it would start with an "h".

"Government run health care option. Just hearing the words "government run" is enough to make me want to run screaming into the night. Yow!

Now that George Soros has been working in league with our useful idiot president to devalue the dollar, it looks like we’re going to move toward some kind of b@stadized currency, probably known as the Americo, that will work and play well with that other b@stardized currency, the Euro.

I guess it’s all going as planned as the O is the first president of the United States to chair the U.N. Security Council and will be pushing for the homogenization of America as just another little old unexceptional backwater.

Change? You bet.

Just like Bush? Not even in the same hemisphere.

This is something like 112 times Obama has publicly and aggressively pushed a program that a majority of the folks he pretends to represent don't want.

Is he unclear on the concept? I don't think so. I agree that he doesn't much care.

He'll try to push this control mechanism known a government rationed healthcare whether people want it or not as, if it is enacted, it will render the power that he and his ilk crave.

80 percent of Americans are for a public option.

A bit bold to use your pulse metaphor that way, don't you think? Unless you mean those really old, white, ignorant, racists at those town hall meetings are the only Americans who deserve to have their pulse read.

And isn't that is what this debate is all about? It has become a kind of class warfare.

I alway thought that the main point behind your book "Intellectual Morons" -- which I loved by the way -- was that people are too often enslaved by their ideologies, effectively muting their rational argument over time.

Why then, Dan Flynn, can I predict what I will find on your blog before I read it?

Be intellectually honest and tell me that isn't true. Okay, you might have a slightly nuanced take on various issues that differ with other conservatives, and to answer your first rebuttal, no, I am not an expert on your blog and you may yet prove me wrong if I did an exhaustive survey of everything you have written.

To your credit, after I watched Obama's speech tonight, guess where I wanted to go? To your blog to get your take.

I know what O'Reilly will say, but I don't know what you will say. Or do I?

I haven't visited your blog in months, and it saddens me that such an intellectual would write some of the posts that I found here. Although you have not responded to the speech -- as of this reply -- I am reading your take on this health care battle.

I expect the madness from Fox News, but from you I want a more reasoned argument. I look forward to your take on the speech tonight.

I am still a fan. Most of all, i want to find out where pragmatism went. Do all of your readers really think this is a socialist conspiracy, that Obama is Hitler? Don't laugh.

This is a very real issue. And it hurts me to realize that the shit I read about in textbooks -- the struggle against civil rights -- that same demonic energy that took the lives of many leaders in the 60's -- is alive and well in our country. Only it wears a suit and calls itself a patriot.

I am not drinking the Kool Aid. I voted for Bush over Kerry. But where are friggin' Conservative Intellectuals? I am praying one comes along. I am pretty sure when he does come along, he won't just be hating on Obama, but coming up with good ideas.

You do have good taste in rock music. I'll give you that. I hope my reply does not offend. You are a terrific writer.

I just want inspiration from your philosophical platform, and not just the reactionary stuff...

"those really old, white, ignorant, racists"

Ah yes, the mind numbed fall back line from the leftists who have no thoughts of their own and can't defend the facts when they play against their failed ideas.

See, if you were a deeper thinking lefty, you would have found some way to work in 'homophobe' and 'Nazi'.

It must $uck to be consistently wrong and consistenly pi$$ed about it.

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James, yes, Mr. Flynn has sadly been repeating his Beckian, Limbaughesque health care line for some time now. He's been reading too much Byron York.

"Ah yes, the mind numbed fall back line from the leftists who have no thoughts of their own and can't defend the facts when they play against their failed ideas."

Care to bring up any facts yourself, asdf? Or are you going to continue parroting what Michael "Savage" Wiener vomits on the airwaves?

LOL! I almost forgot about this awesome salon.com expose on Wiener. Check this tasteful portion:

"Weiner has lived in Northern California for most of his adult life, making a living as an herbalist and nutritionist. He communed with Fijian traditional healers, got married in a rain forest and studied ethno-medicine at the University of California at Berkeley. He swam naked with Allen Ginsberg, dreamed of being the next Lenny Bruce and wrote a rambling novel about a half-mad alter ego. His son's middle name is Goldencloud."

That's some good ol' conservative, macho behavior from Wiener. Here's the link to the article.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/03/05/savage/index.html

Hey asdf, what do yo think he was doing with Ginsberg?

James,

Silly of you not to notice this but in the cluster of things to be upset about one of them is the actual plan, which 53% of Americans oppose according to Rasmussen.

The townhall/stump speeches weren't about generating support for any number of options but for the much unread plan going through Congress right then. And Obama didn't want the options discussed and debated to formulate the optimum plan from all these options, he wanted the current plan passed into law before the August break.

People had already seen the result of a hurry-up bill, which Obama took a long weekend to sign after flying to just the right venue, in the party machine bill that you might have heard called a "stimulus package".

"This is a very real issue. And it hurts me to realize that the shit I read about in textbooks -- the struggle against civil rights -- that same demonic energy that took the lives of many leaders in the 60's -- is alive and well in our country. Only it wears a suit and calls itself a patriot."

That struggle was in the Democratic south to a large extent. And the Bo Weevils had no problem with spending government money, but they had a major interest in spending it so it didn't upset the societal "balance". How you can apply that to low-tax or social conservatives is beyond me.

How the healthcare debate can be transformed into something about race is beyond me as well. Conservatives have opposed socialized medicine all along. How does it become about race simply because the major proponent is black?

The 80% idea is crap anyway. It's an internet poll, from which PSB won't release the data or methodology. That's not a poll.

But even if it were, PSB itself was concludes along with that: "only 37% is able to identify it".

In addition PSB says this about themselves: "In the political arena, PSB has thirty years of experience winning competitive elections. We’ve won nearly three quarters of the races we’ve run, and have worked as pollster and strategic advisor to candidates including President Bill Clinton, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Our innovative and successful political work led Time Magazine to dub us 'Masters of the Message.'"

So you have a election consultant organization publishing an internet poll where they won't release the phrasing or methodology--but where they admit that a bunch of people didn't know what they were talking about. And that bedrock is what it being blocked by our "filter"?!

I know very little about the man except that I love that quote. It nicely sums up how delusion and simple minded the left is.

But, where is the tolerance PMA? Where's the love for diversity and the sensitive understanding that all of your kind pretend to have?

At the end of the day, you and your ilk are just mean spirited liberal hypocrites. And homophobic to boot.

asdf,

How does asking an innocent question about Michael Wiener and whether or not he participated in naked aquatic activities with Allen Ginsberg make me homophobic and a hypocrite? Care to answer the question? I'll repeat it for you.

asdf, why did Michael Wiener consent to swimming naked with Allen Ginsberg and what was he doing?