the cold reality, the needless aspects of gratuitous reformulating the bill to make it an universal insurance mandate against the people.

The most gratuitous aspect was why the rush to do a bill at all if it was meant to take quick advantage of the Dem majority or the emergency response climate of the financial meltdown? Part of the equation would be the timeliness of all, even on behalf of "beleaguered" healthcare industries facing a surge of high prices and tossing millions more out of health care, giving people something for their bailout of criminal and incompetent fat cats, something when jobs would never recover significantly to prevent a supposed GOP resurgence in the fall of 2010. Why the steadfast doggedness of making everything worse except as another vote losing giveaway to another criminal and incompetent corporate enterprise? You can understand the directly paid Senate employees of Big Pharma, but everyone else?

Way before the dull and miserable unfolding of administration speech and behavior- even when campaign rhetoric(which was not supposed to be on a deception par to bald-faced Bush incoherent garbage) the gratuitous slamming of the base and praise of the unconscionable(correct word) was rife in Obama's public addresses. The basic confused thinking of corporate Dems(some old fashioned and directly corrupt, some dazzled by intelligent but insane rationalizations backed by money and media) is enshrined in these contradictions. The clear bottom line, as evidenced by the SUPPRESSION of Medicare as the future single payer easy answer for many decades, is to make the the government the single payer for all the unrestrained profits of the healthcare industry. The impetus to improve and evolve the first reform has been gutted and fought- by our own party leaders- a leadership that has proven as poor as anything else in the recent horrific past of utter intentional powerlessness under a fraudulent GOP regime.

Another strong interpretation- other than Obama's unfortunately honest and muddled New Democrat leaning is the dominant policy of past administrations. Despite what Americans seem to think about their own myths of the powerful Presidency each successor seems to get into the boat of the predecessor in whatever conditions or false trails left to him and learns the first lesson. Don't rock, keep paddling.
Running against Hillary and trying hardest to get at her power support more than seals what is also inevitable. Bring in the retreads from the last Dem administration, especially since few radicalized GOP crooks can be trusted on the job at all(nonetheless, Gates). Part of the unreality which arguably needs no help from the current party leadership is that the mystery could be explained as a second try-
woefully inadequate to current historical context) by the Clinton people.

Their healthcare reform was also a mandatory insurance bill, but one which had teeth to regulate healthcare costs and fees. This typified the corporate philosophy of making big business an essential but reined in charger to revitalize the economy. After this failed and the majority lost in the Congress, Clinton loosened the reins enough to get things moving without much regard to the personal political mistakes that had been made in not beating the MSM and working Congress. This seems to be a continuation, a Clinton 2 administration. Whatever goodwill or movement that comes from outrage against the bad guys, the eventual realization of the desire for reform by the propagandized and suppressed public opinion has been blithely pissed away to continue the corporate Great Compromise that big business rightly sees as a temporary stage to total feasting on the corpse of humanity.

To them the strategy is brilliant and effective- and in their own way learned from experience it is. They have avoided some of procedural mistakes of the past. Instead of removing the president from the controversy as Bill did by empowering Hillary, they removed the WH entirely and threw it into the recent Vichy laps of the disgraced Congress. The media and GOP assaults, as trite and incredible as ever have simply had time to exhaust themselves against no target. This could have been exhausted and gradually pressed from a struggling Congress into any number of productive reforms. Instead they have continued to let the the other resistance damping strategy continue of not regulating and not confronting the healthcare fat cats write the bill. This also drags your enemies into the process and makes passage more inevitable were it not for the basic decision that corporate business must thrive at all human costs burying even the concept of the future good and the very meaning of reform(even insurance practice reform). The points at which this "Clinton reversed" strategy could have made for at least a beginning have passed silently, except for Congressional progressives whose demonization as the "left" shows the bitter Clinton holdovers and their allies in the WH project the blame for their failure in that direction because they consider their necessary friends to exist only in the realm of big business movers. No matter the reality, the failures, the truth exposed, the public will or the moving of sea and mountains people in power simply do not change easily, if ever at all.

Not only is the health care now a drama whether corporatism succeeds in the twilight of the economy and humanity and whether the "progressive" faction representing reason, the common good and the majority can end this sorry dumbing down of the first Clinton healthcare reform, but the GOP has gratuitously been given the opportunity to pick its advantages at will by casting the blame and the suffering upon the people and their real reps or learn to reap the money from the failed reform they will inevitably vote against- getting a gift both ways if they can manage not to blow this as everything else their greed-soaked insanity touches.

So too all presidential policy- which if run in a Clinton 2 perspective is woefully not correcting its own real mistakes and false perspectives- just physical tactics- and repeating inevitably all the bad results and separation from true leadership of Congress and party and people. The reason I have patience even in the likelihood of lost opportunity and shame with drastic consequences for the little guy(and this time the entire planet) is that how is this not typical of all modern presidents fitting their wheels into the ruts of predecessors and with the exhilaration of empowerment running them right over the cliff piqued only by complaints and warnings shouted from the sidelines. Clinton I did not pursue any accountability over Bush I(still doesn't in the slightest and that is putting it mildly). That extended to not pursuing any changes or purging reforms demanded by simple understanding of Constitution and law. Bush 2 the pretender makes a mockery of any natural sense to this as with all other evils reduced to obvious insanity, but the wheels go on enthusiastically in the ruts he made toward the cliff. So too the humongous and unnecessary wars against pitiful oil wastelands and mythical terror. So too the bad economics of Bush and the rehashing of extremely questionable Clinton I experts replaying old and stupid games beyond the point of tradition, relevancy, experience or whatever human brain can puzzle it out to be.

New presidents first fear not be fit for the job unless they fall into the invisible traces they all laughably fancy themselves as holding. A new hope would have swept in more totally new faces- with all the naivete and inexperience that are an inherent risk as well in a policy wrecked world. With that we got Arne Duncan and others mysteriously imitating the obscene crooks before them in the worst or most mythically deceived traditions of the most disastrous past. In that alone and in past statements before the final merging with Clinton experience I think you can be assured that things are not going to go much different for the next four to eight years. Now the distracted debate, devoid of ALL confrontation from simple policy error and premises will be whether the economy can flourish enough to make Obama as popular in legend as Clinton I while possibly as unreal as Bush 2. As with the invasion of Iraq and its inevitable disasters it seems more a dreary question of who gets away with what unchallenged and whether complete and total disaster can be avoided without anyone pretending to know it.

A great part of this has to do whether the health care legislation is approved or not. A new ballgame for better or worse would be if it were not.

In the grand scheme we are exactly as most of our DU progressives have reasoned. Building a fragile true public representation against the tides of corruption in a party itself tragically compromised by money corruption for the critical tests. Not in control, not at the center of institutional power with certain advantages becoming ever more apparent by the naked and moronic nature of the lies needed to pose self-interested compromise with disaster as respectable.