The 'Thinking Liberal' Chimes In

Paglia, the ‘thinking liberal’ that I have talked about before has, well, a scathing piece for President Obama, the Democratic congress and especially Speaker Pelosi. She starts off saying that she does not have buyer’s remorse over Obama, but she is obviously not happy with what is going on. She was also in favor of the Hillary-care back in the nineties, but isn’t happy about the current scheme. I really couldn’t have said much of this better myself, so grab your dictionary, here is a quote:

But who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have
nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises -- or that he would so easily
cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, 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. Obama's aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land. 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.

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.

I just don't get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks?
And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues
to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic;
many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy
required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be
Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama
thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape
and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering
economy.

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 obstructionist 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.

She also was not real pleased with the ‘fishy email’ business.

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.

Ouch.