Government by Kabuki Fools NYT Completely - Or Not

Or maybe it's just pretending.

Anyone who looks objectively at the healthcare "reform" debacle realizes that the Democrats never intended to pass a public option.

[T]he "effort" to get a Public Option was never a good faith effort. The administration actually told the press that talk of a public option was intended solely as a threat to use against the insurance companies in order to try to make them feel sweeter about a little tinkering to reduce costs a little. That's it. That's all the administration ever intended to offer us, in spite of the fact that they were already giving the insurance companies the gift of millions more suckers who would be forced to buy their crappy product despite the fact that they were the least likely ever to need it. (And the rest of the new suckers would be people who were in no position to fight to get what they'd been forced to pay for.)

But to the daredevil investigators of the NYT (whose sole source would appear to be Rahm Emanuel), Obama was forced to accept a bad bill because it's the best he could get.

After weeks of frustrating delays and falling poll numbers, Mr. Obama decided to take what he could get, declare victory and claim momentum on some of the administration’s biggest priorities, even if the details did not always match the lofty vision that underlined them.

From Copenhagen to Capitol Hill, the president determined the outer limits of what he could accomplish on climate change and health care and decided that was enough, at least for now. He brokered a nonbinding agreement with other world powers to fight global warming, averting the collapse of an international summit meeting. And he blessed a compromise on health care to guarantee the votes needed to pass the Senate.

He gave up the game before it had even started, handing defeat to conservatives on a silver platter garnished with dead crows and roses, but NYT "analyst" Peter Baker only sees what his Villager-view allows him to see: poor President Obama. He just wanted too much too soon.

Sure he did. He started out asking for the minimum and telling the opposition he didn't expect to win and to please not beat him up too bad, at which point they roasted him over a slow fire and toasted his demise. And we're all supposed to be surprised and full of sorrow because this oh-so-valiant non-effort resulted in precisely what it was supposed to result in - failure? Don't hold your breath, Rahm.

But defending the indefensible using lies or a deep misunderstanding of everything that just happened (it's the NYT; either is credible) isn't enough for Mr Baker. No no. He must then go on to pronounce this shambles a victory despite all appearances to the contrary, dutifully making the right noises to power and reporting approvingly Mr Obama's bragging spin. As predicted.

Neither deal represented a final victory, and in fact some on the left in his own party argued that both of them amounted to sellouts on principle in favor of expediency. But both agreements served the purpose of keeping the process moving forward, inching ever closer toward Mr. Obama’s goals and providing a jolt of adrenaline for a White House eager to validate its first year in office.

***

After landing in a Washington-area snowstorm and retiring for a few hours of rest, Mr. Obama appeared in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House on a snowy Saturday. He called the health care deal “a major step forward” and the climate change agreement an “important breakthrough.”

Still, he acknowledged that neither was exactly what he had set out to achieve. On climate change, he said that the Copenhagen pact “is not enough” and that “we have a long way to go.” On health care, he noted that “as with any legislation, compromise is part of the process.”

What a leader! He started out with nothing when he was in a strong position to get a great deal, wound up with what is arguably less than nothing no matter what his advocates say (here's what Avedon has to say to that:

Yeah, yeah, I've heard all this before, but without an enforcement mechanism to make the insurance companies do the things the bill says they are supposed to do, with real threats of real punishments if they do the things they are not supposed to do, the only thing the bill really does is force Americans to be a captive market to a bunch of thieves. Really. And if you aren't willing to fight to make this bill better by, at the very least, explaining why it is actually a bad bill and insisting that it be made better, your "realistic" approach is just so much empty self-righteousness.

Amen, sister), and we're all expected to, you know, cheer or something. I don't think so.

Of course, Mr Baker is not the only NYT suck-up "analyst" to overlook an uncomfortable fact or two, suckered in by the heavily self-justifying myth-making of the Democrat leadership. For example, Robert Pear must have been out sick the day months ago when the Reid-Pelosi Twins publicly admitted that the public option was "off the table". He seems to be laboring under the misapprehension that they were, you know, trying to get it all this time.

To get the 60 votes needed to pass their bill, Democrats scrapped the idea of a government-run public insurance plan, cherished by liberals, and replaced it with a proposal for nationwide health plans, which would be offered by private insurers under contract with the government.

And that's not the only mistake in that single sentence. Did you catch the other one? Yes, it's the famous 60-vote shibboleth. Mr Pear must be sick a lot since he seems to have been absent when, for no good reason anyone rational can fathom, Harry Reid decided NOT to pass the bill by the traditional 51 votes but maintain the absurd two-thirds requirement so he could suffer extortion by the likes of Ollie Snowe, Holy Joe, and Ben Blue-Dog. It was almost as if Harry wanted all that pain and agony so he could brag about what a Great Leader he is. But that couldn't be, could it?

IAC, the GoOPer War Machine is all cranked up and rarin' to go obstruct something, so the fireworks ain't over yet and Harry still has time to make a few more concessions to loudmouths and pinheads which our Corporate Media will have no trouble at all covering as successes in parlous negotiation and glorious compromises without which significant legislation unloved by Republicans and Teabaggers (the only citizens whose criticism they deem worthy of coverage) would never be passed.I can see the headlines now. "Courage in Congress", yessir.

So, since that is obviously not the real story, is in fact so markedly different from the real story that they barely live in the same century, the question is: Were the NYT's crack "analysts" completely bamboozled by the Democrat-staged healthcare "reform" kabuki and thus totally incompetent at their jobs, or did they deliberately decide to play it this way to smooch power's ass and win points in the Villager Game?

Actually, the real question is: No matter which explanation is correct, shouldn't they all be sent down to the Minors and replaced by analysts who actually know how to analyze and reporters who don't take pride in their status as administration dupes? That would be different.

Comments

[CMike]

Mr Pear must be sick a lot since he seems to have been absent when, for no good reason anyone rational can fathom, Harry Reid decided NOT to pass the bill by the traditional 51 votes but maintain the absurd 60% requirement so he could suffer extortion by the likes of Ollie Snowe, Holy Joe, and Ben Blue-Dog.

[mick]

I rounded it off. People need to stop pretending that there isn't much difference between 51 and 60. We're being asked to accept a system that requires that damn near 2/3 of us agree, a bad idea that guarantees gridlock and the kind of bribery/extortion/blackmail we've seen over the "reform" bill. We are a majority system, not a supermajority system that lets the minority set the agenda. Every country that has ever tried such a minority-driven democracy has wound up schizophrenic and a boil on the ass of the planet.

Enough pretending.