Democrats' Sickly Approach to Health Care

Even as their presidential candidates debate differences between plans for universal coverage, Congressional Democrats are waving white flags in the coming battle to get anything done.

Leaders of the party that should gain decisive control in November, according to The Hill, are busy explaining the expected defeat of health care reform.

“We all know there is not enough money to do all this stuff,” says Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Finance Committee member and an Obama backer. “What they are doing is … laying out their ambitions.”

New York's Chuck Schumer, who is for Hillary Clinton, agrees, saying he is “not sure we have the big plan on healthcare...not sure that we’re ready for a major national healthcare plan.”

Translation: The health insurance corporations, the drug companies and their Harry-and-Louise lobbyists will still be draining one out of every three dollars spent to cure and heal Americans for their own profit and drowning out any voices for change with loud chants about "socialized medicine."

The lawmakers cite the Clintons' failed attempt at reform in 1993 and even George Bush's defeat in trying to privatize Social Security as precedents for going slowly or, more accurately, glacially in expanding health-care coverage.

Under a Democratic President, we will likely get the expansion of SCHIP coverage that Bush vetoed and more funding for stem cell research, but not much else.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus predicts an uphill battle on health-care reform. “If they try to solve all the problems," he says, "it’s going to be difficult." And possibly unhealthy for their campaigns in the next election cycle.

The Bush-Obama Language Barrier

The man who coined "smoking gun, mushroom cloud" to justify Bush's push into Iraq thinks Barack Obama has not gone far enough to distance himself from the hyperbolic language of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

In today's Washington Post, former White House speech writer Michael Gerson says Obama's oration yesterday "fell short in significant ways" of separating himself from "a dangerous man" who has told lies about the US government.

Wright's claim that the AIDS virus was invented as a means of genocide against people of color, says Gerson, creates "an atmosphere of denial, quack science and conspiracy theories," in contrast, of course, to President Bush's scientifically grounded opposition to stem cell research.

In the 2004 campaign, Gerson had Bush railing against "the soft bigotry of low expectations" in belaboring schools with No Child Left Behind yardsticks as cover for attacking teachers unions that were supporting Democrats

Now, he asks, how can Obama associate himself with a "political extremist, holding views that are shocking to many Americans?"

If Gerson doesn't know the answer to that question, the voters may explain it to him and his former employer in November.

Bush: Saving the Never-to-Be-Born

Give the man credit for his convictions. The President’s reverence for life is so profound that he will take political heat not only to defend the unborn but the never-to-be born.

Today’s veto of the stem-cell research bill will save embryos no longer needed in fertility clinics. In his view, somebody has to stand up for such unfortunates in the face of the Godless who cruelly want to use them for research to combat Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries and strokes.

In supporting such legislation, former First Lady Nancy Reagan is surely missing the point. As much as she loved her late husband, would she have wanted him helped at the cost of degrading the value of human life? If she is interested, the President would undoubtedly be willing to explain this sacred principle to her.