Health Wars (8/17/09)

So how widespread and grassrootsy has the anti-BarryCare public rebellion become?  Let me answer that in video:

San Francisco, folks.  Pelosi-Central.  Also the burg, don't forget, that rejected California Dems' frantic attempt-by-ballot-initiative to rape their bank accounts back late spring, along with every other county in Gollyfornia.  Even the redwood hottub crowd ain't down with Red Barry's bodysnatching BS.

So it is to nobody's great surprise that Donks are jamming their fingers even further into their ears and humming even louder.  Just listen to today's poster-ass:

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin defended his decision Thursday to not participate in town hall meetings regarding health care reform, saying the outbursts that have marred others are “not constructive.”

Durbin, back in his hometown of Springfield for the unveiling of the newest penny honoring Abraham Lincoln, said the yelling, pushing and shoving that has erupted in other parts of the nation are part of a strategy by those opposed to reforms.

“I don’t think that really serves the purpose of informing the public and answering their questions honestly,” Durbin said. “It doesn’t help.”

Rather than participate in a town hall-style public session to discuss President Barack Obama’s push for an overhaul of health care, Durbin has held six meetings with health care officials.

He said those meetings, including one in Decatur on Wednesday, have led to meaningful and cordial debate.

In other words, a statist echo chamber.  A "debate" with no actual debate.  Because, Barack knows, a Dem having to actually listen to viewpoints on healthcare s/he doesn't like from the people to whom they're supposed to be accountable, or answer challenging questions from the people who elected them about the substance of the bill s/he refuses to read, or otherwise put up with the sass and backtalk of subjects who have yet to accept that America is dead and that they must learn their place in the bold, new Obamerika would indeed by highly "unconstructive" to the cause of shoving socialized medicine down their throats - for their own good, of course.

And no, that's not an exaggeration; behold this "Blue Dog" who has drunk ducked deeply and inebriatingly of from the public's wrath, and opted to drown his scorched virgin ears in a keg of B.O.'s KoolAid:

Which means either (1) he never was a "centrist" to begin with, or (2) he never was anything to begin with.  Guess he's kissing his ass goodbye next November; we can only pray it's for nothing.

Is it?  Does anybody really know?  Even "God"?:

An administration official said tonight that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius “misspoke” when she told CNN this morning that a government run health insurance option “is not an essential part” of reform. This official asked not to be identified in exchange for providing clarity about the intentions of the President. The official said that the White House did not intend to change its messaging and that Sebelius simply meant to echo the president, who has acknowledged that the public option is a tough sell in the Senate and is, at the same time, a must-pass for House Democrats, and is not, in the president’s view, the most important element of the reform package.

A second official, Linda Douglass, director of health reform [disinformation] for the administration, said that President Obama believed that a public option was the best way to [ration health care] and [destroy] competition [from] insurance companies, that he had not backed away from that belief, and that he still wanted to see a public option in the final bill. …

A third White House official, via e-mail, said that Sebelius didn’t misspeak. “The media misplayed it,” the third official said.

Crystal clear yet?  Evidently not to House Obamunists, who are leaving no doubt that for them, it's "utopia" or bust:

Boy, with that rock-firm grip on political reality I'll bet you couldn't tell the delighful surnamed Anthony Weiner is from a safe Donk district, couldja?  Or that the smarm pouring off him in gouts didn't mark him as a Chucky Schumer disciple.

A hundred Bolshevik votes will disappear without the full nationalization monte, eh?  Hey, Senator Kent Conrad, what do you have to say to that?:

“Look, the fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the U.S. Senate for the public option, there never have been,” Conrad said in an interview on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.

“So to continue to chase that rabbit is, I think, a wasted effort,” Conrad said.

Hey, Crazy Nancy, what do you and the Weiner have to say to THAT?:

“As the president stated in March, ‘The thinking on the public option has been that it gives consumers more choices and it helps keep the private sector honest, because there’s some competition out there.’

“We agree with the president that a public option will keep insurance companies honest and increase competition.

“There is strong support in the House for a public option. In the House, all three of our bills contain a public option as does the bill from the Senate HELP Committee.

“A public option is the best option to lower costs, improve the quality of health care, ensure choice and expand coverage.

“The public option brings real reform to lower costs over the ten year period of the bill.”

Bullbleep, bullbleep, bullbleep, bullbleep, not so much as she thinks, probably, bullbleep, bullbleep, bullbleep, aaaaaaand bullbleep.  Respectively.  Just for the record.

Seems to me there's an intra-Donk train wreck in the making.  No wonder The Chosen One is sending up trial balloons; given the biggest way in which BarryCare differs from its HillaryCare predecessor is that the latter was an entirely White House project imposed on Congress, while the former is a 100% congressional creation for which Pectoral Man has merely flacked, he's almost as much of a bystander to his crown jewel's fate as the Republican remnant who never got in his way much to begin with.  As committed (sorry, Linda) to single-payer as Barry O is, how much of a perceptual difference is there for him between insisting upon his way or no way and getting nothing versus halving the loaf and "end[ing] up with something no one likes and take a beating for it forever from both sides"?  Wouldn't both end up making him look like a failure, all the more so for all the political capital he's torched in the effort?

Or can he really pull the Trojan Horse (single payer) inside another Trojan Horse (public option) inside a THIRD Trojan Horse (non-profit health insurance "co-ops") rabbit out of his hat at the last possible instant?  Hey, nothing rehabilitates a false deity's image like squeezing out a miracle or two.

Speaking of miracles, is Dr. Chicago paying attention to the one north of the border?

UPDATE: Another Blue Dog takes a different tack and broaches the unthinkable.