Yes, yes, I know, we are supposed to be boycotting The Politico for their idiotic lawsuit threat against The College Politico, but, they are the only one with the complete story and the information to match it up (others have some, but, not enough), so, I hope you’ll excuse this one lapse: Obama links civil rights and health care
President Barack Obama used a dinner-time address to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation to make an impassioned plea for health care reform, placing it in the tradition of the civil rights struggle.
Obama said that the large contingent of black community leaders and elected officials was a fulfillment of a promise and generations of struggle in a country where it took nearly 100 years before the first black members of Congress were elected, and where just a century ago lynchings were part of the American experience. He mentioned “strange fruit growing on the poplar trees,†a reference to the song about lynching written by a Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx and most famously performed by Billie Holiday.
Perhaps it is time to move on and take responsibility for ones life, instead of being a racial grievance monger?
Obama segued from civil rights into health care, ticking off what his plan calls for and borrowing a line from Martin Luther King, saying that the push called for “the fierce urgency of now.”
“We have been waiting for health reform since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, we’ve been waiting since the days of Harry Truman. We’ve been waiting since Johnson and Nixon and Clinton. We cannot wait any longer,” he said as the crowd stood and clapped. “Now is the time to enact health care reform in the United States of America.” (I’ve combined the full quote from CNN with the Politico’s one)
Teddy Roosevelt? If the Internet serves, back then, people straight up paid for their health care, sometimes with chickens and trade work, rather than depending upon some sort of health insurance. While there were forms of “accident insurance” available, to cover again, you guessed it, bad accidents in the workplace, the first actual “sickness insurance” wasn’t offered till 1911.
Anyhow, apparently, it will soon be raaaaacist if you oppose health care reform.
Turning to the economy, Obama said that his policies had brought the economy back from the brink of disaster and those that forget how bad it was had a case of “selective memory.”
Whoa! Massive delusions of grandeur! Looking around at the other stories I ran across, he did his typical Blame Bush schtick.
Yet, he said, disparities still exist and the “economic crisis has made conditions in communities of color even worse.”
“For the majority of some Americans… upward mobility, for others stagnation,” he said. “That kind of inequality is unacceptable in the United States of America.”
In other words, we must implement Socialism, redistribution of wealth, and all the other things that go with the far left Progressive movement. Perhaps if people of all colors studied hard, got an education, didn’t have multiple children before they could afford them, worked hard, then they would be upwardly mobile. Or, they could get someone to ghost write a book for them that makes a ton of money.
He said that eliminating inequality “will take focus and sustained effort,” including making sure civil rights laws are enforced.
Obama does realize that most of the biggest names in the anti-civil rights movement were Democrats, right?
He also talked about the need for personal responsibility and for focusing on education, echoing his “no excuses” speech at the NAACP convention.
“Government alone cannot get our children to the promised land. Government can’t attend those parent-teacher conferences, those are things a parent can do,” he said. “We need to accept our responsibility as parents and community leaders. We’ve got to push our kids to aim higher…no excuses for mediocrity.”
OK, I do have to give Obama kudos for that, which is not exactly anything new. Obama has spoken to that many times, even during the campaign, often to scowling faces and crickets.
I’m still waiting for those on the Left, including Obama, to us exactly how these health system reform plans will lower costs without reducing services. You know, details, rather than 10 second sound bites.
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU
Teach are you also against mandatory car insurance ?