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I am so sorry to burst your idealistic bubble, but while in office Obama will not make enemies that would prevent him from eventually becoming as wealthy as Clinton.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

In your opinion, he strove for the Presidency in order to make a ton o' bucks afterwards. I personally think he was driven by overweening narcissism. But neither of us thinks he's a well-meaning person with the good of the nation in mind.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
There are more urgent events, but I have a question of my own - one that I've asked already: If Obama knew that change was impossible, why did he promise so much?


And, my other point: It's not that Obama "failed" to do anything substantive, he also actively campaigned for very regressive measures. Sins of omission AND sins of commission. You might explain away sins of omission, but not the other.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Honestly, I don't think Obama knew there was no hope to change anything when he was running.

Imagine the old WB Bugs Bunny cartoons when somebody's head turned into a sucker with "SUCKER" printed on the wrapper.

That was Obama. That was every one of us, whether or not we voted for Obama.

I bet the 5 or so families in America that were uber-rich before Obama got into office are now Mega-Uber-Ultimate Rich now.

I accuse those rich families of "Blackface"....

Using Obama, America's First Black President, the way they did to keep getting richer.

Fuckers....

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
There are more urgent events, but I have a question of my own - one that I've asked already: If Obama knew that change was impossible, why did he promise so much?


And, my other point: It's not that Obama "failed" to do anything substantive, he also actively campaigned for very regressive measures. Sins of omission AND sins of commission. You might explain away sins of omission, but not the other.


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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Honestly, I don't think Obama knew there was no hope to change anything when he was running.

Imagine the old WB Bugs Bunny cartoons when somebody's head turned into a sucker with "SUCKER" printed on the wrapper.

That was Obama. That was every one of us, whether or not we voted for Obama.

I bet the 5 or so families in America that were uber-rich before Obama got into office are now Mega-Uber-Ultimate Rich now.

I accuse those rich families of "Blackface"....

Using Obama, America's First Black President, the way they did to keep getting richer.

Fuckers....

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Watch Obama give his perspective on why the economy has become so good for corporations even as it’s become so bad for their workers.

He displays no urge to correct the situation. Obama has no plans, no policy, no nothing. Nothing he said would make any wealthy person uncomfortable about their future. He is perfectly inoffensive, which is what's completely wrong with him.

http://skylerflyer.deviantart.com/art/Ukiyo-e-Style-Serenity-Wallpaper
-548263551


www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?p0=263&iso=20170120T00&m
sg=Time%20left%20until%20Obama%20leaves%20office%22

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Of course, all this is because of One Man......Obama. Ever since he stepped into office he has plotted and conspired with those rich corporations to their benefit and our detriment.

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Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:

Of course, all this is because of One Man......Obama.

There will come a time when they will pay for their avarice.
All of them, I may not be around to see it happen, but happen it will.
Let's put it this way, lots of these corporate fuckers will be jumping out of windows from their ivory towers.

Until then, Have A Nice Day!


SGG

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SGG
Doesn't play. Can you please type out a disabled version of the URL (add a space in between http: and // or something, we can paste it into our browsers and correct it.)

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Of course, all this is because of One Man......Obama. Ever since he stepped into office he has plotted and conspired with those rich corporations to their benefit and our detriment.

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Whoever said it was ONE MAN? Haven't I said, over and over, that the responsibility for this clusterfuck has been shared throughout the past 70 years or so by Democrats AND Republicans? But just because responsibility is shared doesn't mean that Obama gets to escape from his portion of it, does it?

When I listened to Obama , it was one long passive-voiced excuse ("The bubblegum got all over the dog") with no mention of how past Presidents - Democrat and Republican alike - encouraged the very processes that withered the middle class.... The skewing of the tax structure (Reagan, Clinton, Bush), NAFTA/CAFTA (Clinton), China in the WTO (Bush II), etc etc.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:

Of course, all this is because of One Man......Obama.

There will come a time when they will pay for their avarice.
All of them, I may not be around to see it happen, but happen it will.
Let's put it this way, lots of these corporate fuckers will be jumping out of windows from their ivory towers.

Until then, Have A Nice Day!


SGG

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A President could push "these corporate fuckers" out a window. Today. I'm certain it is not gonna happen soon enough, knowing how past Presidents acted.

There will be new President, another one that does not want to violently solve Big Problems because their days will be absorbed by little gestures, posturing, jokes or sympathy. Big Problems frighten them. Presidents voluntarily handle only small problems: a terror attack in Europe, a funeral for Jimmy Carter, a tornado in Kansas, Israelis killing Palestinians, filibusters, a drone-strike on a hospital in the Middle East, oil price fluctuations, Putin in Ukraine, an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, whatever is flashy that day. All small problems that the President can only make gestures and have postures. But there are some Big Problems I'm not bothering myself to name that the next President could solve instead of running away from, if she cared to be bothered by the solutions. I can give you a historical example.

Civil and Voting Rights. Slavery. There were many Presidents before Lincoln that had nothing of substance to say about slavery. They talked, but that was about it until the South violently forced the problem upon the President's agenda. Lincoln would have preferred to spend his time dedicating monuments and making speeches in hopes that South would voluntarily restrain itself from violently spreading slavery to the new territories. Instead, Lincoln had to kill US citizens by the hundreds of thousands. Certainly wasn't on Lincoln's agenda when he was elected. It should have been.

Many Presidents before LBJ had nothing much to say about civil and voting rights. They talked but rioting forced the problem upon the President's attention. LBJ wasted his work days hoping that, with enough bombs, Robert McNamara would somehow or other solve JFK's Vietnam War. LBJ really didn't want to look like a chicken and simply abandon S.E. Asia. Instead, LBJ killed US citizens by the thousands. Certainly wasn't on LBJ's agenda when he was elected Vice-President. It should have been.

If LBJ had known how soon he'd be dead, anyway, or that staying in Vietnam would elect Nixon, he should have done the right thing. Too much to ask of LBJ, the old fool lacked imagination.

Now the USA has a younger fool. Obama is exactly like other Presidents, hoping the next President solves the Big Problems while Obama wastes his work days on whichever daily mini-crisis is absorbing all attention in the White House. It was too much to expect Obama to place Big Problems on his agenda before the problems become a crisis.

http://planetspectra.deviantart.com/art/Fruity-Oaty-Bar-shop-sign-2-26
6335653

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
6-ix

My guess as to how things went is this: Obama promised so much because he really wanted to be president - not to do anything in particular, but to feel, finally. vindicated as being good enough, and to finally be accepted by people who matter. It wasn't political, it was personal.

I pretty much wrote off his initial response to the banking crisis as being any kind of meaningful marker of his aims. He didn't just step into a pile of shit, he sank in a septic tank with that. The crisis was rapidly unfolding, there were people in place who seemed to know what was going on, and there was a response already in progress. I don't think anyone could possibly be smart enough to grasp the complexities of the situation as quickly as required. (Though I personally did wonder at the time - if you want to make banks whole, why not just give money to mortgage holders to cover their loans? If you're going to give money away anyway, you might as well help people AND save the banks at the same time.) Overall, I thought that a better response was pretty impossible.

Instead, his direction became clear to me when he forbade the public option. It took a news article at that time to remind me how it all went, but it was like this: There was a VERY STRONG mandate for the 'single-payer' system, similar to Canada's. But that demographic was reassured that - though there was never going to be a single payer because, yanno, USA! USA! USA! - there for sure was going to be the public option. FOR SURE. So, don't worry single-payer folks, you've been heard. And it took ONE PRIVATE MEETING with insurance executives - and Obama, personally, in a speech, eliminated even the public option. Hence, our Frankenstein system was created.

It doesn't matter if he was threatened, or bribed, or both. Because more than ANYthing else, he just wanted to be one of 'them'. And, threat, bribe or both, they let him know that the public option stood in the way.

All that was quickly followed by (in no particular order) refusing to close Gitmo, expanding mass surveillance and building the surveillance data center in Utah, and expanding the drone program to include US citizens. He ordered his administration to cover up the extent of the BP/ Macondo/ Deepwater Horizon oil spill (I suppose if you use enough aliases after the fact you an obscure the guilty party) and used damaging methods to deal with it. The neocons got to run the State Department and set US policy for Israel, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and of course Ukraine. And he's shilling for TIPP etc,

I swear he loves him his drone strikes because it's the only thing they let him do on his own as president (unless of course he's willing to risk alienating 'them', which he isn't). Go get 'em, tiger! You show 'em what a powerful guy the president is! Take that!

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Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
You really think that the problems the president faces, any president, not just Obama are little ones or little "gestures" - really!?

So Israelis and Palestinians killing each other are "little gestures." Curious. The leader of the Free World has, on his desk, little gestures.
That is hilarious!

SGG

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Yes, all presidents lie, cheat and steal; then line their pockets - especially vice presidents.

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But most of your focus has been on Obama and what he has DONE to the people of this country.

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You have broadly stated that both sides are guilty of wrong-doing; but it is my contention that Obama did indeed start out with the idealistic notion that he could make a difference, and the promises.

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That's why I always say that I hope a republican wins this time out, because they have no idea what they're in for. That's why you hear pundits say that Trump's Wall promise is a pipe dream; even Fox pundits smirk whenever they talk about such outlandish promises. It is not rocket science. You guys are right, there are certain things in place that a president must not mess with - Israel, Saudi Arabia, Oil companies, Big Banks, etc. Look at Congress, do you think they really give a shit about the voters - only when their jobs are on the line. Their cushy work 100 days a year jobs. Believe me, I know how it works, it's all rigged.

The bottom line is to keep the status quo, grease the wheel and keep it running smoothly. But I don't believe that Obama went in thinking - I'm going to screw the voters. Nothing you can say or do that will change my mind. You would have to get hard proof for me to even consider it. He may be a bit arrogant and self aggrandizing; but he's not a thief and general all around bloodsucker - although if you said that of Cheney, I would believe it.

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I still contend that he's made mistakes, especially in the early going as a rookie president. Tell me, when was the last time you saw Congress actually do something positive for the voters, or any American. No, Obama doesn't get to escape the responsibility - with the president, the buck stops here.

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Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
I once believed in the American Dream and thought if I worked hard enough.........

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Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:

ENJOY!

SGG

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

We may not need to repeal Obamacare, it may implode on its own.

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The reason the UnitedHealth disclosure jolted investors is that other insurers are almost certainly experiencing the same problems. Companies accountable to shareholders are not charities, and for all the new regulatory control that ObamaCare imposed on the industry, the government can’t force them to do business. (Not yet, anyway.) But the law is ever more obviously the Faustian bargain that we predicted and that insurers should have known better than to accept when they lobbied for the bill in 2009.

None of this means ObamaCare is rapidly “collapsing under its own weight,” as some Republican like to imagine. The entitlement will continue to trundle along, especially as it becomes ever more a vast Medicaid expansion. Commercial insurers are being displaced by Medicaid managed-care HMOs, with their ultra-narrow physician networks and closed drug formularies.

Then again, this trend is itself another symptom of decline. While liberals can continue to insist all is well, businesses don’t enjoy the same political luxury.

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The reason the UnitedHealth disclosure jolted investors is that other insurers are almost certainly experiencing the same problems. Companies accountable to shareholders are not charities, and for all the new regulatory control that ObamaCare imposed on the industry, the government can’t force them to do business. (Not yet, anyway.) But the law is ever more obviously the Faustian bargain that we predicted and that insurers should have known better than to accept when they lobbied for the bill in 2009.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

The problem with Obamacare is that he didn't SOLVE THE PROBLEM. THe REAL problem with healthcare is that, like the financial services and real estate and military spending, since that's one of the few places where money is actually flowing through the sludge that is our economy, all of the parasites have sunk their teeth into it. You cannot build a viable sector when it's being bled dry for profits at every step.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
Second - as I mentioned earlier, you can't directly compare the US healthcare spending percent GDP against the percent GDP of other developed nations.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
There's probably a better thread to put this in, but to continue an observation about UnitedHealth leaving Obamacare (and to rebut the republican notion that everything was just fine the way it was before) ...
when a lot of people don't get healthcare, it makes sense that you end up with a larger percentage of people who are sick, and of those who are sick, overall they tend to be sicker. And when they finally get access to healthcare, it should come as no surprise that their large numbers and complicated illnesses tend to be more expensive.
There just doesn't seem to be room in the business model for keeping costs down, dealing with lots of extra-sick people - AND making a profit.
Hence, UnitedHealth left (most of) the field.

Some information:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/us/health-insurance-affordable-care-
act.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

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Originally posted by rue:
I didn't go back to re-read old posts except to try and place the topic in the right place.

I wanted to evaluate Obamacare and try to figure out if it did any good.

The two items I'm interested in are death rates (mortality) from chronic illness and medical bankruptcy. If Obamacare is working, death rates from chronic illness, and medical bankruptcies should be down. If they're not down, or even going up, then that needs an explanation.

I tried looking up diabetes, hypertension, asthma and COPD here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/diseases-and-conditions.htm because those are chronic conditions that need ongoing management. But the only trends data I could find was for diabetes. It indicated death rates have NOT gone down. I also found info on ER visits (if people are getting routine care ER visits should be down) but there were large gaps in the data so it was hard to interpret.

And according to the previously posted report, medical bankruptcies are at par with pre-Obamacare.

So, while percent uninsured has dropped in half https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2018/
demo/p60-264/figure2.pdf it doesn't translate into either money or lives saved.

It might be that without Obamacare, we would be in desperate freefall in terms of health and economics. I haven't even though about how to figure that out.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, in terms of cost ... either to the individual/family or to the economy as a whole/percent of GDP ... Obamacare is NOT working, as far as I can tell.

There are at least two factors working against it

1) The first is that Obama's caving in to The Fed, and Obama's fiscal policies, both conspired to drive the wealth gap even higher. (Also, in many cities the real estate bubble is creating a housing affordability crisis.) That means that in some areas there is an opioid crisis driving death rates up (In poor economies, drinking and drugs increase dramatically.) and in other areas there's a huge homeless population ... which Obamacare is not about to reach.

2) Obamacare does nothing to control the overall cost of medical care delivery. That means even for the homed the cost of insurance is prohibitive, and many people choose to do without.

It's insane. Almost ANY program would have been better than the clusterfuck that is Obamacare.

I was skeptical but not overtly critical when Obama chose this path. Understanding that it was a complicated system with some redeeming features (such as the "pre-existing conditions" clause and the fact that insurances had to show that 85% of the premium was spent on medical care) I was ready to let it play out for few years and see how/whether it was an improvement over the previous clusterfuck.

For us, it turns out it didn't make any difference because - for us- the critical feaure is Medicare. But for others ... many individual success stories, but countervailed by the increasing number of homeless/addicted, which the program fails to reach. Whatever success the program has is being counervailed by failures; overall stats are likely to be a "wash" but meanwhile the cost o healthcare keeps going up.

It's an interesting and necessary topic, tho. I think we should look at where Obamacare has succeeded (individual stories and narrow sectors) and retain those best features, and look at where it has failed (also individual stories and narrow secotors, because I think we need to look at the stats with more granularity) and modify those.

OK, needs more thought!!


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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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