 |
| Who would Steve Vaillancourt predict would win this contest? |
"McConnell has some difficulty with the Obamacare issue because the Kentucky version, known as Kynect, has been a huge success. About half a million Kentuckians signed up for health insurance, many receiving it for the first time. Fewer than 100,000 joined private insurance plans; that means the bulk of the population joined Medicaid, which was greatly expanded under the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. But at the same time, Obama is deeply unpopular in Kentucky and polls indicate that many Kentuckians do not associate Kynect with Obamacare. So McConnell threads a very difficult needle here, suggesting the Web site can continue while the law that created it must be scrapped"
Here is a place we all love to be: Have your cake and eat it too. Kynect, the new healthcare system in Kentucky which took form as a result of the Affordable Care Act, is a huge success. Even those folks down in the hollow can cotton to the idea of better coverage for a lot less money, which Kynect has brought them.
So they love Kynect in Kentucky.
Trouble is, they hate Obama in Kentucky. So if you ask them if they like Kynect, it's, "Yes, indeed!" But if you ask them whether they like Obamacare, it's "Hell, no!"
And if you point out to them that Kynect is, in fact, Obamacare, they react thusly, "Say, what?"
This is the Kentucky version of, "Keep your damn government hands off my Medicare and Social Security!"
Why the visceral reaction against Obama in Kentucky? Same reason, Mad Dog suspects, they hate him in Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas and parts of Florida, Georgia and, yes even in some parts of New Hampshire. You see, pssst...he's Black!
And, of course, he's a Democrat and he's in power. So Reince Priebus, if that is a real name--the guy who heads the Republican National Committee--was explaining yesterday to Robert Siegel, on NPR, the President is a complete failure, and everything he touches goes sour. So, the Ebola infections of those two nurses in Texas, all those kids streaming across the Rio Grande (or wherever it is they stream across) the ISIS beheadings, the war in Syria, the financial collapse in the European Union (never mind our government kept us going into a recovery here in the USA), the refusal of Republicans to pass a comprehensive immigration package through the Republican House, it's all because Mr. Obama is a catastrophe as a President. The worst EVER.
And he says it with such fluency and conviction, you just get carried along and you know he must be right, because he sounds so sure.
Our local candidates are cast from the same agency: From Fred Rice, who believes the best way to end pollution in New Hampshire is to build more roads, so automobiles will not have be line up at red lights with their motors idling, to Scott Brown who believes we ought to solve all problems by letting "the private sector lead the way."
Whatever that means.
If the the private sector were still leading the way in heath insurance, they'd be maximizing profits for their stock holders by excluding anyone with a "pre existing condition" or by charging prohibitively high rates for anyone who is guilty of ever having been sick or being of the female persuasion. Remember those bad old days before Obamacare?
Edwin Muskie of Maine once remarked there are only really two opposing sides in politics, and they are not Democrat vs Republican, or even conservative vs liberal but of confidence vs fear.
Franklin Roosevelt knew this, and he used this in his famous, "the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself." But somehow, the most vigorous, self assured fearless sounding candidates are the Scott Browns and Fred Rices and Mitch McConnell's who stand up tall and straight and intone the chicken little rap--we are all going straight to Hell behind this man who was conceived on Mars and borne in Kenya.
 |
| President Obama's Birth Certificate Ceremony |
No comments:
Post a Comment