Obamacare: The Musical!

Tony Passaro sent the link to this video to me this morning — IT. IS. DEE-LISH!!! You may remember Tony is the man who organized 12 busloads of people from Harford County, Maryland, to attend the 9/12 Tea Party in D.C.

So, if you watch the video, yes, I know “single payer” is a stigmatized term so Obama/Congress have a shell game now where the same result has different names and takes differing amounts of time to accomplish. I’ll have to sort out “Shell Game” chapters for my Obama Prevarication Predictor and my “Obama’s Predictable Playbook.”

Ooh! ooh! Speaking of the Obama Prevarication Predictor! Tomorrow Obama will appear on five of the six Sunday morning news interview shows to apply the lipstick of his rhetorical powers to the pig of Obamacare! Somehow he couldn’t fit Fox’s show into his schedule — such a shame! Jonah Goldberg has figured out the perfect epithet for the phenomenon: more cowbell! (See the video here.)

According to the Obama Prevarication Predictor, which notes that whenever Obama’s plans to destroy the U.S. economy encounter an objection sufficient to derail them, he will go on TV and say he would never, never, NEVER do the objectionable thing (although in weasel language, so he really can), the objectionable thing either is not really there OR is good for you OR is both not there AND good for you PLUS only BAD people object to it and IT IS THEIR FAULT that people will DIE! if Obama does not get his way so HURRY-HURRY-HURRY-NOW-NOW-NOW! Also, he is totally a reasonable man and not really attached to the objectionable thing anyway.

Hah!

A reminder: none of the Obamacare proposals will go into effect before 2013, which is after the next presidential election in November 2012, assuming Obama hasn’t figured out how to name himself president-for-life before then. The purposes of this date are to ensure that the glories of the bait will be extolled from now until the next election and to postpone the experience of the hook until it is too late.

Update, 9/19/09, Sun.: Earlier when I was writing this I wanted to point out that the Kool-Aid has worn off for George Will and now he is mocking Obama, but I couldn’t find the link before I had to leave. I’m back and I’ve found it (Newsweek, published online 9/12/09, for the issue dated 9/21/09). Will’s headline for the piece is enigmatic and coy — “Mitch McConnell Smiled? The President is CPR for the GOP” — but Newsweek’s online headline couldn’t be more straightforward, “Why No One Believes Obama” — be sure and read the whole thing:

On the 233rd day of his presidency, Barack Obama grabbed the country’s lapels for the 263rd time—that was, as of last Wednesday, the count of his speeches, press conferences, town halls, interviews, and other public remarks. His speech to Congress was the 122nd time he had publicly discussed health care. Just 14 hours would pass before the 123rd, on Thursday morning. His incessant talking cannot combat what it has caused: An increasing number of Americans do not believe that he believes what he says.

He [Obama] says America’s health-care system is going to wrack and ruin and requires root-and-branch reform—but that if you like your health care (as a large majority of Americans do), nothing will change for you. His slippery new formulation is that nothing in his plan will “require” anyone to change coverage. He used to say, “If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period.” He had to stop saying that because various disinterested analysts agree that his plan will give many employers incentives to stop providing coverage for employees.

He deplores “scare tactics” but says that unless he gets his way, people will die. He praises temperate discourse but says many of his opponents are liars. He says Medicare is an exemplary program that validates government’s prowess at running health systems. But he also says Medicare is unsustainable and going broke, and that he will pay for much of his reforms by eliminating the hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and fraud in this paragon of a program, and in Medicaid. He says Congress will cut Medicare (it will not) by $500 billion—without affecting benefits.

He says the nation’s economic health depends on controlling health-care costs. Yet so important is the trial bar in financing the Democratic Party, he says not a syllable in significant and specific support of tort reforms that could save hundreds of billions of dollars by reducing “defensive medicine” intended to protect not patients from illnesses but doctors from lawyers. He has said he will not add a dime to the deficit when bringing 47 million people into government-guaranteed health care. But Wednesday night, 17 million went missing: “There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.” Almost 10 million of the uninsured are not citizens, and most of them are illegal immigrants. Presumably the other 7 million could get insurance but chose not to. Democrats propose fines to eliminate that choice. He suggests health-insurance companies are making excessive profits. But since 1996, profits of the six such companies in the S&P 500 have been below the 500’s average. He says a “public option”—a government insurance program—would not be subsidized to enable it to compete unfairly with private insurers. (The post office and the government’s transportation -“public option,” Amtrak, devour subsidies.) He says the public option is vital for keeping health insurers “honest”—but that it is only a wee “sliver” of reform.

It’s going to be delicious watching Obama tomorrow really exploring the space with his cowbell.

For more, over at The Sundries Shack, Jimmy Bise is predicting, “This train is bound for wreckage, this train ….”