‘Tis the Season for a Senate Full of Pissed-off People and Obama’s “Parody Of Leadership”

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

The irony is just too much to ignore!  In this season of “joy” and “love” many of us are pissed off, including the jerks in the U.S. Senate.  Of course, the bigger irony is Mr. Hope and Change, who ran against all that nasty partisan rancor, has exhibited such a lack of leadership that the crap has mushroomed into a state of more partisanship than ever!

And it’s clear enough even for The New York Times, which published this story a couple of days ago:

Senate Debate on Health Care Exacerbates Partisanship

By CARL HULSE and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Published: December 20, 2009

WASHINGTON — Nasty charges of bribery. Senators cut off midspeech. Accusations of politics put over patriotism. Talk of double-crosses. A nonagenarian forced to the floor after midnight for multiple procedural votes.

In the heart of the holiday season, Senate Republicans and Democrats are at one another’s throats as the health care overhaul reaches its climactic votes. A year that began with hopes of new post-partisanship has indeed produced change: Things have gotten worse.

Enmity and acrimony are coursing through a debate with tremendous consequences for both sides as well as for the legislative agenda in the months ahead.

Should Democrats prevail, it will put an exclamation point on an eventful first year of their control of Congress and the White House and leave Republicans on the Napoleonic side of what one predicted could be President Obama’s Waterloo. A Republican victory would invigorate an opposition party that was back on its heels at the beginning of 2009 and would strike a crushing blow to Democrats and their claims to governing.

The toxic atmosphere is evident on the floor, on television talk shows and in the hallways of the Capitol.

Poor Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter is lamenting the horrible atmosphere (as well as his own probable regrets that he didn’t stay a Republican?)…

Obama has let the whole affair turn into a food fight.  Aloof  through months of this unfolding mess, probably really crapping in his pants now about the state of his Presidency.

So, we’re all just plain stuck in the morass of a country that is a shell of what it was.

Sigh.

On the subject of leadership, Robert Samuelson has a column excoriating our beloved leader. From The Washington Post (my bolding):

Passing health reform could be a nightmare for Obama

By Robert Samuelson

Monday, December 21, 2009

Barack Obama’s quest for historic health-care legislation has turned into a parody of leadership. We usually associate presidential leadership with the pursuit of goals that, though initially unpopular, serve America’s long-term interests. Obama has reversed this. He’s championing increasingly unpopular legislation that threatens the country’s long-term interests. “This isn’t about me,” he likes to say, “I have great health insurance.” But of course, it is about him: about the legacy he covets as the president who achieved “universal” health insurance. He’ll be disappointed.

snip

So Obama’s plan amounts to this: partial coverage of the uninsured; modest improvements (possibly) in their health; sizable budgetary costs worsening a bleak outlook; significant, unpredictable changes in insurance markets; weak spending control. This is a bad bargain. Health benefits are overstated, long-term economic costs understated. The country would be the worse for this legislation’s passage. What it’s become is an exercise in political symbolism: Obama’s self-indulgent crusade to seize the liberal holy grail of “universal coverage.” What it’s not is leadership.

Not just a “nightmare” for Obama, Mr. Samuelson. I don’t know what you would put in it’s place, but I agree, this is just a load of crap.

Well, “he’ll be disappointed.”  He won’t be any more disappointed that all of us who watched this fiasco in it’s nascent stages during the 2008 primaries and on to the White House.  His and the Democrats’ “goals” basically boil down to further entrenching our “business-oriented, non-system,” with a stamp of approval on crapping on women thrown in for good measure,  and who the hell cares about health care??  Republicans see it as a great way to win back power, but you think they would change much for YOUR benefit???  HAH!!  (See what’s going on in New Jersey with Republican governor-elect Christie?  Sounds EXACTLY like Bush…)

What a complete waste of a golden opportunity, post-Bush.

Do Democrats ALWAYS have to screw it up??