Is Obama for real?

Obama's not kidding, or is he? I mean ... he's still complaining that we progressives don't understand all the good he has done ... like championing universal health care that resulted in a gigantic windfall for insurance companies, companies whose high administrative costs will make affordable health care unattainable.

I would prefer single payer (like Medicare for all), but I can settle for the public option (Medicare for those who choose it). That is, I can settle for a Medicare-style health care plan IF it is not emasculated through unreasonable reductions in reimbursements to the health care providers who maintain life support for senior citizens like myself with chronic heart and kidney diseases.

Obama doesn't get it. Without at least a public option, our health care system is doomed because of that heavy layer of cream—those administrative costs—skimmed off the top by the insurance companies. AND because he failed to deliver a workable health care plan from the left, the right will be able to say that we on the left can't get it done. Obama burst the political energy from the left with a flawed plan.

Now Obama is up to it again. Championing a tax plan that may look good on the surface to some—and especially the extension of unemployment benefits to those facing the end of their unemployment payments ... not the 99ers, though—those who have already exhausted their extensions. But the loss of revenue because of the extension of tax cuts to rich, and, yes, the reduction in payroll taxes adding to the insolvency of Social Security and Medicare both by adding to the deficit ... is a package that has more minuses than pluses. It's the pleasure of having one's porridge upfront and losing our birthright in the long run.

If we and our leaders cannot stiffen our backbones now to actually rebuild our nation with renewable energy resources, high-speed communications, fixing of the "concrete" infrastructure in our cities and towns, and laying high-speed rail between these same cities and towns ... putting people to work rebuilding our nation when it is the only thing that will rebuild the middle class and provide jobs for all who want them ... well, if we can't do that now under a progressive program, we will be doing it next under a fascist program ... in which we will lose many, if not most, of the freedoms we hold so dear.

Because the right is going to throw our lost chance to make it happen in the left's face ... and when all the money Obama and Bernake have been printing comes back to haunt us with inflation (think Germany after WWI and Argentina more recently) ... because things of real value will be crumbling and falling further and further out of date ... including the skills of our workforce ... and things here will become worth less and less ... the right will tell the people that they, the right, can and will create the new millennium, if given the opportunity. And look, the left failed. And where has the world heard that before?

The sad truth is that Obama claimed and won the mantel of the left, and he did fail. But it is Obama's policies that are failing, not the left's. The left wanted a public option in our health care. The left wanted the stimulus to go to the rebuilding of our nation. Obama did things that sounded like they should placate the left, but did not go for the substance of what we, the left, proposed ... loudly and clearly.

Let's face it, folks. We are still rich enough as a nation to pay for a safety net out of the wealth we create ... and if we renew our nation by rebuilding it, we will be able to do continue the safety net as well as put the people back to work.

And you know what? I believe that people working under a transparent and honest progressive government is what the right fears most. It is only when the left is corrupted and loses its way that the right has a chance.