All blog posts are cross posted

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Do you remember Medicine Shows?

Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Kevin O'Brien equates President Obama's push for his health care bill to that category. He says:

It's your lucky day, Cleveland.

Dr. Obama's Traveling Medicine Show is in town.

Step right up, folks. Press in close around the wagon and hear the good doctor pronounce with preternatural poise on the prodigiously potent properties of his potion, a panacea so powerful that he predicts -- nay, promises! -- that it will prevail even over the laws of economics.

But only if you believe.

My dear people, Dr. Obama doesn't want your money. Oh, no. Not today.

What he wants today, ladies and gentlemen, is your trust. What he needs today is your faith.

And it must be today.

So put down your calculators, your gloomy Congressional Budget Office reports, your just-released public opinion polls that indicate spreading doubts about this miracle remedy for all things that ail you and the country.

If you have any misgivings of your own, please, please just wash them down with a long, comforting swallow of Dr. Obama's magical elixir.

Let go of your fears, friends. Trust. Believe. Now. We really do need to move this along.

The longer it takes to get this thing through Congress, the greater the likelihood that someone will read it, and we won't get through at all.

And then, as Dr. Obama made quite clear in his radio address last Saturday, the chance to fix health care in America might be lost "for generations."

Yes, generations. It's now or almost never, because . . . um . . . well . . . because he says so.

Now, some of you are bound to notice that the bottle that contains Dr. Obama's enchanted brew lists no ingredients.

That's because no one -- not even Dr. Obama -- really knows what's in it. His helpers in the House and the Senate are constantly adding their own pinch of this and dash of that to the recipe. But you can trust that it's good.

On top of that, you've got his cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-not-hire-lobbyists-for-White-House-jobs promise: "I will not sign on to any health plan that adds to our deficits over the next decade."

Forget that Congressional Budget Office piffle about increasing the deficit by $239 billion over the next 10 years.

Dr. Obama absolutely, positively would not sign such a bill. Well, not on purpose, anyway. (Hey, not everyone is a label reader.)

"This is an issue that affects the health and financial well-being of every single American," he says -- as well as close to 20 percent of the U.S. economy. Can you think of a stronger argument in favor a rush job?

Go read the whole thing.

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