Liberal Voice Camille Paglia:Obama's Healthcare Horror -- Heads Should Roll

Obama’s Healthcare Horror
Heads should roll – beginning with Nancy Pelosi’s

I must confess my dismay bordering on horror at the amateurism of the White House apparatus for domestic policy. When will heads start to roll? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ...has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.

There is plenty of blame to go around.
...
The president is promoting the most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation since the Bush administration snookered the country into invading Iraq with apocalyptic visions of mushroom clouds over American cities.

www.salon.com...

Camille Paglia, liberal spokewoman and blogger has made it clear that the current healthcare bill is a mistake and town-hall dissent justified.

Moreover, she acknowledges the reality that this "reform" is merely a stepping stone to a government-run, single-payer, system that will end private insurance and free market competition:

You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you're happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.

See, even the "radical left" can be rational at times.

Actually, Paglia is a libertarian at heart with a liberal bent and is not averse to benign government influence in our lives. But even she is appalled at the inconsistent incoherence of a bill crafted to punish doctors and insurance companies rather than to provide needed reforms to a failing health care system.

As with the massive boondoggle of the stimulus package, which Obama foolishly let Congress turn into a pork rut, too much has been attempted all at once; focused, targeted initiatives would, instead, have won wide public support.

How is it possible that Democrats, through their own clumsiness and arrogance, have sabotaged healthcare reform yet again? Blaming Republicans is nonsensical because Democrats control all three branches of government. It isn't conservative rumors or lies that are stopping healthcare legislation; it's the justifiable alarm of an electorate that has been cut out of the loop and is watching its representatives construct a tangled labyrinth for others but not for themselves. No, the airheads of Congress will keep their own plush healthcare plan -- it's the rest of us guinea pigs who will be thrown to the wolves.

Normally supportive of all things Democrat, Paglia lays blame directly at the feet of the wrong-thinking and intolerant left in this disaster.

... What do Democrats stand for, if they are so ready to defame concerned citizens as the "mob" -- a word betraying a delusion of superiority to ordinary mortals.

I thought my party was populist, attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech.

But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House.

If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.

Paglia even goes so far as to find reason and logic in Sarah Palin's "death panel" description of healthcare omniscience:

I simply do not understand the drift of my party toward a soulless collectivism.

This is in fact what Sarah Palin hit on in her shocking image of a "death panel" under Obamacare that would make irrevocable decisions about the disabled and elderly. ... On reflection, I realized that Palin's shrewdly timed metaphor spoke directly to the electorate's unease with the prospect of shadowy, unelected government figures controlling our lives. A death panel not only has the power of life and death but is itself a symptom of a Kafkaesque brave new world where authority has become remote, arbitrary and spectral. And as in the Spanish Inquisition, dissidence is heresy, persecuted and punished.

Perhaps cooler heads, as with Camille Paglia and, now and more frequently, others seeing the fraud that the healthcare proposal actually perpetrates, will prevail.

Maybe some will also see that an informed electorate may have more on the ball than they are given credit for; certainly more than the MSM and even the elected "officials" supporting such overreaching and underhanded treatment of Americans.

deny ignorance

jw

[edit on 12-8-2009 by jdub297]

I read the article the morning and couldn't believe my eyes. She certainly said what many like minded individuals have been thinking over the past several months. Kudos to her for having the courage to call these whizbangs on the carpet.

reply to post by jdub297


And another one sees the light...Brava, for her.

I hope there is time enough to effect a change in the opinions of those that lean more to the left. Haste makes waste, and we've seen too much of it in 200 days.

I'll be attending a couple of these Town Hall events this month!!

How do I get a press-pass from ATS?

The Tea Party meetings I have been at are equally represented between Republican and Democrat, but everyone agrees on smaller government, and killing this Healthcare Bill!

Some, like me, want a National Healthcare Plan, but we want an intelligent one, not this one!

I've actually met Camille Paglia - she's decidedly not a "liberal".

She's not "right wing" either, but you'll find she criticizes the left as vociferously as she does the right, if not more so.

It is high time the Democrats woke up and started to confront Obama and his sad tactics. What makes me so angry is it is impossible to really get the facts on this whole thing unless you pour through the present bills. Who knows what late changes and additions are going to be snuck in to this thing.

One good thing though, at least the Democratic Majority is waking up and no longer allowing Obama's rush tactics to play out any more. Being already on Medicare I am fairly secure in getting my medical needs met, but will it still be that way if this travesty passes? I somehow doubt it.

reply to post by free2bme


That is the sad fact about this, all this bickering back and forth in the congress is just that bickering. Two separate bills will be passed by the House and Senate and then when the democrats(because they have the majority) come together to "reconcile" the bill they will put stuff back in that people didn't vote for.

It also really ticks me off about how they are putting down one person that said keep your hands off my medicare. What she was getting at is that this bill will cut the budget to medicare. This bill will make broad sweeping changes to our health care system none of which address the problems. Well it only addresses one problem and that is pre-existing conditions.

But until somebody can explain to me how the HHS Secretary choosing which plans we will have to pick from because he/she has the authority to allow and deny companies from participating on the Health Care Exchange they are setting up, is me having the ability to "choose" which plan I get this isn't going to fly.

Nothing about this bill has anything to do with the "choice" this bill allows the HHS Secretary to decide what "choices" you are going to have.

Originally posted by jibeho
I read the article the morning and couldn't believe my eyes. She certainly said what many like minded individuals have been thinking over the past several months.

It proves critical thinking belongs to no party.

So much for name-calling and other vapid, substance-free "criticism."

jw

I was going to post "in before the libs disown her"... but a poster already has. So much for allowing differing viewpoints in your political ideology.

Originally posted by xmotex
I've actually met Camille Paglia - she's decidedly not a "liberal".

She's not "right wing" either, but you'll find she criticizes the left as vociferously as she does the right, if not more so.

So, it sounds like that should give what she has said credibility with both sides of the issue here on ATS.

Perhaps both sides should put down their weapons long enough to read through it a couple times ...

reply to post by jjkenobi


If you're responding to my post, I was simply stating a fact - she is a politically very independent Democrat, and not a typical ideological liberal.

As far as "disowning" her, I have little use for any prefab ideology myself, so IMO it was a compliment, not a criticism

In this case, I don't particularly agree with her.
In other cases I have.

But she's not a "typical" anything

[edit on 8/12/09 by xmotex]

Originally posted by Hastobemoretolife
reply to post by free2bme

 

This bill will make broad sweeping changes to our health care system none of which address the problems. Well it only addresses one problem and that is pre-existing conditions.

Hey, what would happen to a Republican bill to make the "pre-existing conditions" illegal so long as they (the conditions) disclosed?

Insurance is, after all, gambling. They gamble you won't get sick and we gamble they'll pay more than we would have.

What if we could shop around for "basic and preventive coverage" and leave insurance for catastrophic (accidents and cancer) and high-risk behavior (smoking, obesity, sky-diving)?

Wouldn't all of our overall "odds" get better if we put the riskiest into separate groups, and bought the coverage we thought best for us?

Pick one:

cancer

heart diseacse

ALS, etc.

We could use our own (tax-exempt) money for basic care, and insurance or pooled or even federal money for the 'extras.' Prices would drop as the local MD and the "Doc-in-a-box" clinics competed for instant, overhead-free, cash.

Obama is promising too much and we all know that is not going to deliver.

Why do we know? because that is exactly the same campaign tactics he used to gain votes.

A lot of promises and not delivery.

See that is my main problem, I know now how Obama works, better yet how government works.

Originally posted by getreadyalready
I'll be attending a couple of these Town Hall events this month!!

How do I get a press-pass from ATS?

Maybe if you agree to watch only, and NOT PARTICIPATE (remember the CNN reporter in Chicago?).

Having an objective, in-house assessment would go a long way to quieting those who dismiss concerned activism out of hand, and even worse, here on ATS, much less the rest of the world.

Maybe if you promised simultaneous recording of the event to back up your 'report,' ATS would host your video for non-beleivers or those who can't or won't attend live.

I'd vote "YES" if asked.

good luck

deny ignorance
jw

[edit on 12-8-2009 by jdub297]

Originally posted by xmotex
I've actually met Camille Paglia - she's decidedly not a "liberal".

Does she have to have a label or party affiliation to be correct? To tell the objective truth?

Have you never heard of "Slate Magazine?" Never been to slate.com?

She blogs for a liberal site.

As I said in the OP and she admits in her quotes, she is a libertarian with a socially liberal outlook.

Re-read, if you're not sure. Or, go to Slate and see.

Deny ignorance!
jw

Does she have to have a label or party affiliation to be correct?

Of course not, which is why I said it was a compliment, and not a criticism

I am not a member of any political party at all, myself, I'm registered as an Independent.

Originally posted by jjkenobi
I was going to post "in before the libs disown her"... but a poster already has. So much for allowing differing viewpoints in your political ideology.

Isn't this exactly part of what she was so concerned about?

Read the part where she compares intolerance to the "Spanish Inquisition." She said that under party-think, "dissent is heresy and must be punished."

Too bad, no?

deny ignorance

jw

Originally posted by centurion1211
So, it sounds like that should give what she has said credibility with both sides of the issue here on ATS.

More likely, it will give those here on ATS reason to disown and denigrate her.

"Dissent is heresy and must be punished," she says of liberal dictates.

jw

reply to post by jdub297


Well, this is a republican Health Care Plan.

It address some problems. Not saying it is the full answer, I like your ideas about having catastrophic health insurance if that is what you want.

I'm all up for reform, I am not for the government getting involved in my health care anymore than they already are though, they have already made things the way they are now.

The way I feel about it is that we aren't going to get any kind of reform that benefits the people until we get the crooks out of Washington, including the lobbyist.

[edit on 12-8-2009 by Hastobemoretolife]

reply to post by marg6043

See that is my main problem, I know now how Obama works, better yet how government works.

Marg, here is what makes Obama tick, and here is how to win:
www.abovetopsecret.com...