9/10/09: TWD's Agenda For The Day- Again, Don't Sully Ted's Name

Once again, it was touching and soul hitting that President Obama evoked the name of his departed friend (and you could arguably say, one of his mentors) Ted Kennedy last night.

Vicki Kennedy said the speech last night was magnificent. The choice to bring up "The Liberal Lion" in the concluding stages of the speech with the letter he wrote to him showed masterclass craftsmanship. His monologue last night was certainly the nail in the coffin to those who thought he had showed no spine in this debate.

Obama has showed spine in my mind, but the spine to stand for any bill and for "Trigger Man" Emmanuel to do his dirt, eviscerating any legitimate dissent among those who are seeking real reform.

And with that, President Obama must not sully Senator Kennedy's name by showing the spine he showed before he showed last night.
Again, it can't be said enough: Don't sully this man's name and his life long crusade for a bill that makes the insurance companies and their immoral CEO's be up in a tizzy of glee (new Fox show pun unintended) in the final result.

People may qualm with David Siorta from time to time, but he is no question right to the fullest in his post-speech column observations last night.

Why do Republican presidents and politicians never bash "The Right," but President Obama uses a joint session speech to bash/call out "The Left?"

Obama felt the need to tell the country that he's devoted to making sure the wildly unpopular private insurance industry at the heart of the health care meltdown remains profitable. He also made sure to forget that Americans love Medicare and hate private insurance when he went out of his way to reiterate his support for "market" economics (shocker - this was the line both parties stood up and gave a thundering round of applause). Awesome.

Continued

- Completely unclear why Obama promised to "call out lies," and then proceeded to embrace the Right's most dishonest narrative about tort reform being a major vehicle to fix health care (not surprisingly, the "don't negotiate with legislative terrorists" lesson was reinforced when the GOP response called Obama's bluff and pushed to work with him on tort reform).

- The wavering on the public option would be hilarious if it wasn't so serious. Really - his insistence that he supports it but might also support removing it reminded me of a Saturday Night Live skit parodying wavering and waffling Democrats. Obviously he just had to listen to pundits insisting he must abandon the public option, when a huge majority of Americans continue to support it, and he has a huge legislative majority in Congress. He obviosuly just HAS to compromise on it because...well...just because - and he certainly can't use reconciliation like President Bush did because...well, again, just because. And, of course, those of us who don't expect him to compromise away an already compromised yet still wildly popular public option are obviously on the radical fringe regardless of polling data. Obviously!

- Though he didn't draw a direct equivalence, he implied there was one between the progressive push for single payer and the ultra-conservative push to destroy the entire health care system. Sick.

And he is so darn right about this next one, because this legitimizes them big time:

In sum, when you couple this with the speech's fawning praise for lunatics like John McCain and Chuck Grassley and add to it the news that the White House is holding closed-door compromise meetings with corporate Democrats tomorrow, I felt like I was listening to a parsed screed by President Rahm Emanuel, not a call to arms from the Barack Obama who actually ran for president. There was lots of passionate talk about the problem, and little courage to demand a serious solution.

Sirota (and the rational skeptics here and throughout the rational online network) will be further justified if it turns out to be all talk but not walk.

A true Ted Kennedy Health Care Bill will not be some watered down compromise for a compromise that is still is in pole position than a true public option that will piss off establishment aspersion whores like President Snowe and Lieberman.

And it will make the fact that he evoked his name even more shameful if the majority of the public isn't given what it wants.

I don't know if The Lion would want that. But I sure as hell know that the people suffering and on the verge of life's precipice (and all the new voters) would certainly have every right to be angry.