Obama bites back: The president's fightback over healthcare reform deserves our support' (Guardian)

[Jackeens]

When I was a little boy in Philadelphia, just about the time Lyndon Johnson's rightwing opponents accused him of trying to turn the country communist by introducing Medicare, a government-run programme to provide health insurance to Americans over the age of 65 (an institution now as sacred in US politics as the royal family is here), I came home one day in tears complaining to my mother that an older boy was bullying me. Doubtless I expected her to phone his parents, or in any case to solve the problem for me. Instead, she sent me back outside, telling me that although this boy was a year older than I was, he was no bigger than me and I shouldn't let him push me around. The next time he picked on me, I bit him.

My mother was not pleased. She, it seemed, had envisioned a more manly display of fortitude – at most a simple punch on the nose. But when it became clear that the bite, however unorthodox, had done the job, she allowed herself to see the humour in the situation, observing, "Well, at least now he knows you have some teeth."

After months of town hall tantrums, lying advertisements and increasingly surreal debate during which the opponents of US health care reform have been allowed to make all the running, President Obama's speech last night reminded his allies and his opponents that he, too, has teeth.

As Obama noted, healthcare reform has been unfinished presidential business since the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. And as Obama's critics on the left point out, the national health insurance proposals of not just Harry Truman but Richard Nixon both contained more radical measures than anything in Obama's plan. Indeed, I begin American Radical, my new biography of the legendary investigative journalist IF Stone, in 1949 with Stone asking Dr Morris Fishbein, spokesman for the American Medical Association and the man who coined the phrase "socialised medicine," whether, "in view of his advocacy of compulsory health insurance … you regard Mr Harry Truman as a card-bearing communist, or just a deluded fellow-traveller?"

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/10/obama-healthcare-reform-fightback

[TomCADem]

1. K & R

[Cha]

2. Thanks, Jackeens, this is very refreshing

after reading all the negative stuff around here from those who aren't nearly as smart as Obama.

"But if the president did a credible job of channelling Franklin Roosevelt last night – and I think he did – that leaves it to us to provide the energy, anger and enthusiasm that got the New Deal's radical measures through a hostile, suspicious congress. After last night, Obama's opponents should have no doubt: the man has teeth. But it's up to us to make sure his promises – and his threats – have bite."

Now, more than ever we need to do this from the ground up..constructively, not snits.

[NYC_SKP]

3. Kick! nt

[Undercurrent]

4. Thumbs up!

:thumbsup:

I was so impressed with our President last night.

[azmouse]

5. k&r