Politics has been Oprah-fied... by Scott from Oregon
(libertarian)
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
My sister sent me a You Tube clip that was supposed to move me. It was a clip of Barack Obama and The Black Eyed Peas. My sister is an Obama fan and thinks he will save this country from the evil politicians who have had control over the federal government for forever. To prove it she sent me the video, which is supposed to show me how cool Barack Obama is, as if he is one of us. I watched the clip and thanked her for thinking about me. After all, politics is best discussed within family circles...
I'm cool. I really am. I know that sounds cocky but it is true. I am truly cool. I am friends with famous musicians. I know famous members of famous political movements and environmental movements. I do a bit of art myself and I have been around the world more times than I have been to church. I know all 82 acceptable two letter Scrabble words and I can start a fire with a scrap of leather and a couple of sticks...
So cool does not impress me. Don't try to win me over with how cool you are. It won't work. I won't fall for it, at all.
I'll see right through you.
Watching Barack Obama speechify his way into people's hearts lately, it made me want to crack open a beer and hit someone over the head with the empty bottle. Anyone who falls for the crap that gets people all excited about a Barack Obama presidency deserves a knock in the noggin, is what I'm thinking. "Here, have an empty Guinness on me! Brilliant!"
"It is all fluff and mirrors!" I want to tell them. "It is all speechifying and button-pushing. You are all being played like Stevie Wonders' ebony and ivories. You are all being snake-charmed by a sloganeer!"
Nobody wants to hear what I shout from the end of the bar. They are all drunk on "hope" and the idea that "yes they can!"
"Yes we can, what?" is what I want to know? When will Barack lay himself and his campaign on the line and tell us exactly what it is that he CAN do?
From where I sit, I can tell you this. Barack is a politician. He graduated college and set himself on a trajectory to be a politician. He went into the ghetto and got his picture taken. He got himself a crooked financier and got into a state senate. He moved on to Washington and got himself lots of special interest donors and speechified himself within the Democratic ranks and got himself to where he is now.
The only thing different about Barack Obama to all of the other career politicians is his name and the color of his skin. If you look past that, to the substance of the man, you get the same thing you always get- AMBITION.
You get empty rhetoric, high-falutin' slogans, and raw, common and base ambition. You get another Washington player who knows how to play to an audience and tell them what they want to hear.
You have got to hand it to Barack Obama, though. He knows what works in our Paris Hilton/ Oprah Winfrey culture, and he uses it.
"Yes we can!"
Heck, he's even got it stuck in my brain now. Like a Pepsi commercial. Or a Coke.
"It's The Real Thing..."
I don't think so.
There is this old guy running for the presidency. You may not know much about him, because the media doesn't want you to think about what he is telling you. He doesn't have fancy slogans and stuff to get you all excited. He isn't very cool and the Black Eyed Peas aren't making a video with him in it. He comes from the private sector- you know, that place where people actually work for a living- and he got involved with politics because he didn't like the direction the federal government was going. You see, politicians kept coming to Washington and taking more and more power for themselves, creating a bigger and bigger bureaucracy and making more and more demands on Americans just because they were now Washingtonians and that's what Washingtonians do...
Well, this guy came to Washington and was totally uncool. He cried foul. He tried to put a stop to the usurpation of power that was occurring. All of the other politicians shunned him and called him Dr. No. But he persisted. His name is Ron Paul. He is old and kind of shrill and not as cool as Barack Obama. But he is one of those Americans who is more concerned with America than with is own ambitions.
I sure wish Barack Obama was more like him.
Did you like this article? If you did, Thumb It! 46
thumbs so far
The views expressed
in this article are those of Scott from Oregon only and
do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
Scott from Oregon is solely responsible for the contents
of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated
with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Ron Paul needs your help to keep his job as a Texas legislator. Send money today! Pick up the phone right now and give until it hurts. Even if that amount is only $3 it’ll help. And if you call in the next ten minutes we’ll send you an autographed picture of Mr. & Mrs. Ron Paul standing in front of the Paul’s new five million dollar Texas mansion. Go get one of those advance paycheck loans, never mind what the interest rate is, you simply must have this beautiful picture to hang next to Elvis. As I said two months ago, Osama bin Laden could get more delegates than this old man. What’s his total now, 14?
“If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"-Libertarian
I see you must be sort of new to politics, being all cool and all. As someone who has been following Obama for over a year now, let me explain his supposed 'lack of details' that the Clintonites fill your ears with. He started out his campaign all about the details. So much so that he found he was losing people to his "professorial" mannerisms. This man is brilliant, hit his site if you're as new as you seem to what Obama is about, where he goes into exactnig details about almost every issue for those of us who like the more prefessorial type. If you don't like the site, try the book.
Is he cool? Without a doubt, he's fraggin awesome. A president who can look good on a basketball court, shirt tied around his waist, at the age of 40. Is he one of 'us'? Again, without a doubt. But those aren't his only strengths, those are just things that make the less literate comfortable with this 'real' person, and not some win-at-all-cost politician with a butt-load of promises that they'll never keep.
And honestly, I don't even care if he wasn't as brilliant as he is. Like it or not, he's uniting the entire country and doing an awesome job of it. I've never in all my Nixon+ years seen anyone who has ever had such a following for the presidency, who inspires and gets even the least cool of us whoopin it up in excitement. We are in for the best 8 years of American History if he makes it into office, that I promise.
I have strong reservations about Obama's Health Care Plan. It seems strikingly similar to Hillary's plan, but that is a different story. I will quote Obama's webpage to support my concerns.
1) The issue of health care reform arose from a need to provide health care insurance to 45 million or so uninsured Americans. "Obama's Plan to Cover Uninsured Americans: Obama will make available a new national health plan to all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses, to BUY affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to members of Congress." If so many American's cannot afford to BUY healthcare today, what makes Obama think they will be able to do so by simply creating a state run option.
2) Insurers would have to issue every applicant a policy, and charge fair and stable premiums that will not depend upon health status. In order to do this, insurance companies would have to identify risk on a regional or community wide basis, increasing the rates of coverage for the 95% of the working population who use little health care services to pay for the 5% who use almost 50% of all resources.
3) So plans are more expensive than before for the above reasons, how do we get universal coverage? Subsidies. Individuals and families who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still need financial assistance will receive an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan.
4) This money has to come from somewhere - Employers that do not offer or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees will be required to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of the national plan. Ah...just what we all wanted to hear in this time of economic recession. Maybe we could make unemployment crack 7% if we tried hard enough.
5) Lowering Costs "Catastrophic health expenditures account for a high percentage of medical expenses for private insurers. The Obama plan would reimburse employer health plans for a portion of the catastrophic costs they incur above a threshold if they guarantee such savings are used to reduce the cost of workers' premiums." Again where does the money to reimburse employer costs come from? See #4.
6) Regulation...doh. "Simplified paperwork and reined in health costs." Sounds great - how would he accomplish this simplification? "The Exchange will act as a watchdog group and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible. The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and have the same standards for quality and efficiency. The Exchange would evaluate plans and make the differences among the plans, including cost of services, public. Providers who see patients enrolled in the new public plan, the National Health Insurance Exchange, Medicare and FEHBP will be rewarded for achieving performance thresholds on outcome measures. He will also challenge the medical system to eliminate inequities in health care through quality measurement and reporting... I could go on. All of those initiatives require countless hours of data collection and interpretation, which will likely become the responsibility of the providers and hospitals which are graced with the opportunity to care for patients in the state run health plan.
No thanks Obama.
Each item sounds good, but your logic is circular - I save you money by charging you more here. Forget the fact you have to pay people to collect and process the information to figure out how much to charge and how much to reimburse. As if the tax code was not already complex and wasteful enough.
1) Emphasis on Affordable. Obama answers all his problems by offering a solution rather than enforcing a law. A solution that is good enough that not taking it would be dumb. It's like his stance on Abortion, he's not wanting to create laws against it, he wants to setup a system that gives so many better options, people just don't go for the Abortion route unless absolutely necessary. For Healthcare, he makes it very affordable by basing it on your income. Vs Clinton's: Even if you can't afford it, we'll dock your pay to make sure you have Healthcare. (Admittedly, you're not promoting Clinton here)
2) The laws that would prohibit higher premiums for health conditions wouldn't apply only on an individual basis, but on an area basis as well.
3) So the plans aren't more expensive which is the prerequisite for this number.
4) And makes this point mute as well.
5) The money comes from the government who would be spending less money on sending billions to Iraq.
Point being, your dislike for it isn't based on facts, but assumptions particularly aimed at trying to tear it down as something other than what it is. If you want to see the difference between state-ran health insurance plans, visit European states like Belgium, the Netherlands, etc and see where he got the idea from. In Holland, prescription medicines are about 1/10th the price of the same medication in America, hospital bills 1/5th, and while you are required to have Health Insurance, it is very affordable. Obama is just bringing American up to worldy standards with his plan, something advantageous of having been further from home than to a Mexican Beach.
Not to be a grammar nazi, but man, this is one of my pet peeves.
Sphynx: It's a "moot point" not "mute point"
I happen to have an opinion, but will choose not to voice it at this time other than to say that I disagree with Obama and most Dems for that manner. Not to say that I like everyone in the GOP either. If you're going to discuss intelligently and make points using colloquialisms, please make sure you actually use them correctly.
I have a better idea. Don't go whining about something you perfectly understood as it detracts from the conversation alot more than the actual typo itself.
And anyhows, No. I won't try to conform to perfect writing, and it doesn't make a person any less intellectual in their conversation to not do so. That's a personal freedom. If you don't like how I write, don't read it. Or having already read it, just ignore it.
I guess I just wished that middle class Americans like myself realize that they will be supporting AFFORDABLE health care for everyone by paying more for their health care than they already do.
I know an awful lot of middle class citizens, republicans, democrats, and independent alike who feel they pay too much already. As for comparing American health care to state run one payer universal care systems, that is not what Obama is proposing (there will be both private and public insurers under his system). More importantly, the real issue is not addressed by Obama. Expectations of health care have to change in this country for universal health care to be a possiblity - unless you are ok with raising taxes significantly. "Obama will make available a new national health plan to all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses, to buy affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to members of Congress." Congressional level health care (aka Cadillac health care) is by definition an extensive plan of coverage which carries the costs of such a grandiose plan. Why not start small - provide basic necessary care to all who cannot afford more expensive private coverage without burdening the economy with new taxes. The state-run health plans you speak of in Europe have people waiting 6 months for elective surgery or to see a consultant physician. This is not the "congressional" level of care Barack speaks of and is a poor comparison.
He left out tax deductions for personal health care costs, similar to what companies receive, which alone would make health care affordable to millions more self employed workers. Also, I am glad you chose not to refute that there will be countless wasted productivity created by so much additional beurocratic regulation to an already over-regulated industry thanks to HMOs and PPOs.
Bottom line, "affordable" as you and Barack choose to use the word, is a relative term. Raising the cost of already expensive health care for a hundred million+ Americans in the middle class is not "affordable" for me.
Sphynx, I like your enthusiasm for your candidate but you claim, "Like it or not, he's uniting the entire country and doing an awesome job of it." If this were true the election might as well end today. I admire his oratorical prowess, he's doing some unification of disenchanted Dems, Indep., and Rep. but clearly the entire country is not united around him or much of anything else. There are many who don't embrace his more socialized agenda just as there are many who don't embrace Dr. Paul's Constitutional agenda for restoring liberty and unity.
Just out of curiosity... who do you think is more likely to come up with a sensible health care plan that takes the poor into account? The guy who was born into a poor 1-parent home, or the others who were born into well-to-do families and have never had to struggle or see their parents struggle?
You may not understand his healthcare system, but that's why a background is so important to know on a presidential candidate, because that background tells you more than a completely laid out healthcare system plan.
And Gary, I didn't say he had united. I said he is uniting.
Sphynx - Let me thank you for you post and your replies to my commentary. You clearly feel passionately for Barack Obama, and your passion for politics is to be commended. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the Nolan Chart site, but you will find this site filled predominantly with limited government, libertarian viewpoints.
Most people will not agree with the concept that American's are owed health care simply for "being an American". That is certainly debatable, but you can agree that for over 2 centuries, that was not an attribute of America and this country was still felt to be a great nation. A common arguement against universal health care by libertarians is that the taxation required to provide such a service is essentially forced charity, under penalty of fines or arrest if you do not comply. Some people may wish to spend their hard earned money supporting those less fortunate, but others see a fairly large chunk taken out of their not so large paychecks and wonder - why is this change to even bigger government necessary now?
Shouldn't the government focus on cutting existing expenses first before expanding health care - our $9 trillion defecit and $450 billion annual deficit are the largest ever. I certainly agree with Barack's return to the PAYGO plan - I just think he promises both an exapansion of domestic spending and increased fiscal responsibility. Even with a phased out withdrawl of Iraq that he proposes (as opposed to Ron Paul's proposed immediate withdrawl), he says that he wants to add to the troops in Afghanistan and possibly invade Pakistan against their wishes - I wouldn't count on cashing the check of military savings just yet to fund your healthcare plan. Anyways, I have respect for Obama. (see link for wikipedia info on Obama)
He seems a better option than McCain and Clinton to me, and I encourage you to continue to participate at Nolan Chart - and hopefully educate some of us on Obama - and learn some of our opinions as well.
Thanks. I'm not really a part of the Nolan Chart, I'm an iGoogle junkie (google.com/ig) and this particular blog appeared on my Elections 2008 module (http://www.google.com/ig/adde?moduleurl=mega_gadget.xml&source=imag)
So, my participation and reading of the Nolan pages is limited to its appearance on my iGoogle page. :) As far as I know, yours is the only blog from Nolan that has appeared on my page.
Just wanted to add a brief comment to Bob Miller, the irascibleformer Democratic Governor who debaseshimself every time he spews his vile, vindictive ad hominems against Dr. Ron Paul, his supporters and libertarianism in general. How someone like this could ever be considered a "statesman" is well beyond my depth of understanding. I guess I'm just stupid, eh Bob? Or should I say, Bubba?
Who would be more likely to come up with a sensible health care plan that takes the poor into account? How about a doctor who actually works in the healthcare field, one who used to devote time to a hospital for the poor, charging only $3 an hour, and even waived the $3 for patients who couldn't affort even that. RON PAUL!
If you want to start bringing up ethical history, how about a candidate who served in the U.S. Military, who just celebrated his 51st wedding anniversary with his only wife, a candidate who does not hire speech-writers but who speaks right from the heart, whose message isn't tailored for certain groups or states, whose message has stayed the same throughout his many years in Congress, whose voting record proves his committment to the message to a 'T', a candidate who doesn't target certain ethnic or religious groups in his campaigning.
Want to comment on
this article? Leave your comment
here. Your email address is required to track your
comment. However, we will neither publish your email
address nor distribute it to other organizations or
persons. The only reason we might use it would be if
we needed to contact you regarding your comment. All
comments are subject to our
terms of use policy.
