I personally hope it doesn’t get forced upon us all…
I don’t know about Obamacare per se, but this nation desperately needs some kind of universal health care system. The fact that we’re the only developed nation that doesn’t have one is a tremendous embarrassment.
NO!!
NO NO NO NO!!! this whole thing makes me c.r.a.z.y.
@TheSchizoidMan - We have the best medical services in the world because we’re a free nation.
“Obamacare” is a term that only brainwashed, uninformed Faux (non)News fans idiots use.
Get a clue.
@Randy7777 - Maybe so, but on the other hand, most bankruptcies in this nation are caused by medical bills, something that is unheard of in nations with universal healthcare. And getting your health insurance thru your place of employment is the pinnacle of stupidity; among other things, it means that, if you lose your job, you lose your health insurance right when you need it the most. A single payer system would address these problems (and others) with minimal impact on quality of care.
I don’t want no uppity democrat to force me to pay half as much for better care! You can take my broken healthcare system away when you pry it from my cold, (preventably) dead fingers!
No matter what the Court rules, the American people demand satisfaction. That is a total repeal of ObamaCare. Americans have let our lives be ruled by a renegade Supreme Court for far too long.
@agnophilo - The CBO just determined that ObamaCare is double the cost of what is was sold as.
And Medicare was billed as $6 billion in 1965 and $12 billion by 1990. It was actually $100 billion in 1990. But who’s keeping track?
Basic economic principles instruct us that government involvement in anything must necessarily grossly inflate costs.
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - Republicans are not “the american people”, a majority of americans don’t favor repealing the healthcare reforms.
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - Um, actually that is due to the runaway inflation of healthcare costs that “obamacare” was designed to curtail. Other countries with universal healthcare cover everyone at half the cost per capita. “Government” isn’t bad, our government is bad. And in no small way this is likely due to half of our elected officials running on a campaign of doing nothing to address big social problems.
@agnophilo - I never said Republicans were the American people. And yes the vast majority of Americans want Obama Care repealed. It’s a boondoggle. It’s so horrible that Obama has had to hand out over 1000 waivers to keep his union and corporate cronies quiet until after the election.
@In_Reason_I_Trust - Well that’s interesting because the Obama campaign has embraced, “Obamacare”. “Happy birthday, Obamacare,” Jim Messina, the president’s campaign manager, wrote in an email to supporters last week to note the anniversary of the reform becoming law. (If you don’t believe me google Messina and obamacare.)
@agnophilo - It doesn’t look like health care prices will ever go do for better care. Anything the government has it’s fingers in the prices go up. Look at the “Cash for clunkers” program. Poor people can’t buy any cheap cars anymore because of the governments involvement.
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - You are absolutely right. Anything the government gets involved with raises the price of it. The government’s function is to govern private enterprise, not to cross the line and be a business.
@Randy7777 - Two rulings come to mind: 1. Roe v Wade which legalized abortion and initiated a new Dark Age where mass murder became a matter of choice and privacy. 2. The Kelo decision which allowed a municipality to confiscate private property and give it to someone else in order to increase the tax base.
@agnophilo - The news media is constantly saying that a majority of Americans want Obamacare repealed. If you want to look at other countries that have universal health care you better look at their entire economy. It is not good and their health care is not good. If it was then why are they seeking to come to America for health care?
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - Show me a source that says that americans overwhelmingly support repealing the healthcare reform bills please, or go away.
@Randy7777 - Do you have actual figures for how the cost of used cars has gone up? And grocery prices are doubling for some items – did the government subsidize all of them too or is the economy just in the shitter?
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - I don’t put the blame on the supreme court. If we look at history when Christians were active the nation went in the way of righteousness, when they weren’t it went the other way. I believe we have the best system of government in the world and it’s up to us to learn how to us that system. More has been done to curb abortion in the last few years than since it was enacted.
@Randy7777 - The Supreme Court usurped power and neither the legislative nor the executive branches rose up to protect the Constitution from those oligarchs.
It is the purpose of government to protect human rights. The government violated the right to life and the right to property.
That is tyranny in action.
@agnophilo - 1st off please watch your language. Go try and buy a vehicle for under a couple thousand dollars like you could before “Cash for Clunkers”. Those cheap vehicles were destroyed. It hurt the poor people. Source for majority of Americans wanting repeal: Gallup poll, Rasmussen Reports are just two. I googled, “majority of Americans want Obamacare repealed” and got a lot of hits.
By the way I said something was bull before I read your “watch your language” comment.
@agnophilo - You’ll just poo poo any source that disagrees with your alternate universal view. Do your own home work. And may I suggest getting away from Media Matters and the other leftist propaganda mills your get your junk from.
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - Agreed – the government did violate the right to life. My point is that the church can do something about it, if it would stand up and use the government like it was intended. When the church is silent the government goes into secular mode (deomocratic) away from the republic style of government that it was originally designed. The founding fathers designed for this to be a Christian nation ruled by God, through Jesus Christ. We have gone into a democratic style of government which is one of the worst styles of government on the face of the earth. We need to get back to: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - I agree with you. (and I like the word poo poo -lol) agnophilo just wants to argue and won’t look at anything objectivly.
If the individual mandate is decided to be unconstitutional, I wouldn’t be overly surprised or even upset, but I will be pretty troubled if the rest of the health care law goes down with it. To me, the other provisions seemed basically like pretty logical and beneficial consumer protection laws. Of course, it’s amazing how quickly people forget that the mandate is a “compromise” originally drafted and championed by conservatives, just like “cap and trade” was a conservative (and free market) alternative to simplistic environmental standards. The objection to these things after they are suggested or enacted really just shows that “conservative” lawmakers really want the government to do nothing at all on these issues, even though government is the public’s official forum for regulating things that affect whole populations or large geographical areas. Party of status quo forever.
@vickevlar - Your link doesn’t say that a majority favor repealing the bill and my gallup link (which randy7777 deleted because it contained a four letter word) showed the reverse to be true, that a minority favored repeal in a recent poll. As for it being unconstitutional that is silly, it’s a tax incentive not a mandate – by that logic having to pay higher taxes if you’re single is a “government mandate” to get married and a violation of peoples’ civil and religious freedoms. That is ridiculous, congress has the power to tax people however they like (and regulate interstate commerce, and promote the general welfare).
@Randy7777 - What did I refuse to look at objectively? I asked you for a source for a claim, how is that not being objective?
@agnophilo - You discredit any source that doesn’t line up with your belief. You are a difficult person to have any discussion with.
@TheSchizoidMan - did you know that the average wait for an MRI scan in Canada is 18 months? That doesn’t sound like “minimal impact on quality of care”. and that there have been multiple lawsuits there because people under this “health care plan” are not receiving adequate, prompt treatment. The government is actually failing to appropriately cover them.
what fires me up the most is that people are too ignorant to understand that THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT AFFORD TO COVER EVERY PERSON IN THIS COUNTRY. We don’t have any money as it is. Can people not do math?
Oh wait!!! We can just print more! That’s it. Whew! Glad I remembered that.
@ToLiveLoved - I’m aware that there are some delays in Canada, yes, and I’m also aware that there are some Canadians who find the wait annoying, to put it mildly, and who envy the fact that such delays are much more rare in the US than they are in Canada. Even at that, though, I am not aware of any Canadians who believe that their health insurance system should be discarded and replaced with a spaghetti-like mess such as ours. Far from it; every Canadian I’ve ever heard who talks about the way health insurance works in America sneers at it in contempt. In fact, I’ve never heard of any citizen of a country with universal health care saying that they wish their nation had a system like ours, not even the ones who admit that our “system” has a few advantages over theirs.
@TheSchizoidMan - I have only known two Canadians who needed health care. Guess where they came to get treatment? If it’s MY mother, diagnosed with breast cancer having to wait 10 weeks for radiation treatment, I’m not okay with that. If MY son tears his rotator cuff and has to wait 10 weeks for surgery, which then affects his outcome, again…..NOT okay with me. I think our system needs tweaking. Absolutely. To throw out the baby with the bath water, however, will be the beginning of the end for us in many ways. People are just “drinking the kool-aid”, I fear. Not thinking the whole thing through. I can’t get past the simple question of how does a broke government pay for it? If you can’t afford a new car, you certainly don’t go buy a new house. Right?
@Randy7777 - We’ll never know since you refuse to give a source. And the only source I’ve discredited here is the rasmussen poll because it only counts people they consider “likely voters” and therefore by definition is not a valid source in support of the claim that a majority of americans in general feel a certain way about the healthcare bill.
I’m sorry to use logic, facts and critical thinking on your blog, I know that can be a real bummer.
@ToLiveLoved - You think that’s bad – the wait time for a non-emergency MRI for someone without insurance in the US is… the rest of their short life. The wait time to die isn’t bad though.
When you have to treat everyone the lines are longer. The lines would be really short in the grocery store too if only some people got to eat.
Bear in mind also that they have actual government controlled hospitals, the equivalent of a nationwide VA health system – we need not do anything remotely like that to have universal coverage.
@ToLiveLoved - The countries with universal healthcare pay on average half what we do for medical care. It costs too much to pay 50% less as a nation for better service?
@ToLiveLoved - Or not get bogged down in wars that cost trillions of dollars and never end. Or not cut taxes when the deficit is skyrocketing. Or not deregulate the banking industry so they bring the economy to the brink of collapse.
@ToLiveLoved - Doesn’t anyone get that we already HAVE government health insurance in the US and people LOVE it? Do people on medicare have to wait 18 months to get an MRI? I don’t think so. So what is with the knee-jerk “we’re going to become canada” rhetoric?
@agnophilo - I have nothing else to say to you. You’ll just twist logic and make insulting comments.
@agnophilo - You’re right; I should have actually thought about it before I wrote “majority” rather than just “more Americans favor…” but I think that’s the important takeaway from the poll numbers (not that literally the majority have this opinion.) I think reform is necessary and it will happen in our lifetimes because healthcare costs are not going to go down again on their own, but now might not be the right time if that’s really how public opinion falls, whether it be ignorant or well-rationalized. I know that is an entirely candy-assed position, and that real people are affected in real ways while we wait for a “good” time to pass reform, but if it’s a political reality, so be it. It might even just mean waiting for a milquetoast, nonthreatening centrist democrat to come to power, removing the knee-jerk anti-Obama element. Haha, as if someone like that could ever get elected anymore.
@vickevlar - Obama IS a milquetoast, non-threatening centrist democrat. Or do you think he’s a secret muslim who pals around with terrorists and wants to subvert democracy one birth control pill at a time?
It’s about spin and power, not policy.
@agnophilo - The problem isn’t that he’s a centrist democrat; the problem is that his opponents REFUSE to see him that way because he is Barack Obama. I’m not saying that all these people who hate the bill would suddenly become more amenable to the idea if a boring, middle-age white dude who makes old people feel comfortable were president, but I don’t think they’d build up such a cohesive (and large) opposition, particularly because they’d lose the people who are just giving a direction to their anti-Obama sentiments. I might be overestimating how much hatred of the health care bill is tied to hatred of Obama, or I might be underestimating how badly republicans will refuse to see ANY leftist as centrist, non-threatening, etc. anymore (I can never tell if I’m giving Republicans too much or too little credit.) All I am saying is that if the supreme court strikes down the bill, putting aside the bad precedent it sets, it will be a shame but not the end of any hope for reform. …I don’t think.
@vickevlar - really? You’re going to bring race in this? Obama was asked if he believed Americans were racists. His reply was: I’m President.
@Randy7777 - Did I say that “Americans” are racist, or even all people who dislike Obama are racists? And to be clear, I am not saying that opponents of the health care bill dislike it because he’s black either. I said that opponents of the bill have more unified, directed political force because there was already fairly strong distrust in Obama, and it picks up all the people who just have a general dislike of him. I do think some of the distrust in Obama is racially motivated in some people, but the distrust is not just because of his skin color or his foreign-sounding name- I also said a “boring” and “middle-aged” guy, someone who doesn’t seem so “elitist” because of his educational background or the way he speaks, or someone who doesn’t have such a draw with young people, who tend to be more radical. It’s a combination of factors that make Barack Obama seem like a particularly objectionable democrat.
@vickevlar - Thanks for clarifying that. Personallity wise I like Obama, policy – I don’t agree with him.
Comments (48)
I personally hope it doesn’t get forced upon us all…
I don’t know about Obamacare per se, but this nation desperately needs some kind of universal health care system. The fact that we’re the only developed nation that doesn’t have one is a tremendous embarrassment.
NO!!
NO NO NO NO!!!
this whole thing makes me c.r.a.z.y.
@TheSchizoidMan - We have the best medical services in the world because we’re a free nation.
@dingdongdingbat - Agreed
@ToLiveLoved - Agreed
“Obamacare” is a term that only brainwashed, uninformed Faux (non)News fans idiots use.
Get a clue.
@Randy7777 - Maybe so, but on the other hand, most bankruptcies in this nation are caused by medical bills, something that is unheard of in nations with universal healthcare. And getting your health insurance thru your place of employment is the pinnacle of stupidity; among other things, it means that, if you lose your job, you lose your health insurance right when you need it the most. A single payer system would address these problems (and others) with minimal impact on quality of care.
I don’t want no uppity democrat to force me to pay half as much for better care! You can take my broken healthcare system away when you pry it from my cold, (preventably) dead fingers!
No matter what the Court rules, the American people demand satisfaction. That is a total repeal of ObamaCare.
Americans have let our lives be ruled by a renegade Supreme Court for far too long.
@agnophilo - The CBO just determined that ObamaCare is double the cost of what is was sold as.
And Medicare was billed as $6 billion in 1965 and $12 billion by 1990. It was actually $100 billion in 1990. But who’s keeping track?
Basic economic principles instruct us that government involvement in anything must necessarily grossly inflate costs.
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - Republicans are not “the american people”, a majority of americans don’t favor repealing the healthcare reforms.
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - Um, actually that is due to the runaway inflation of healthcare costs that “obamacare” was designed to curtail. Other countries with universal healthcare cover everyone at half the cost per capita. “Government” isn’t bad, our government is bad. And in no small way this is likely due to half of our elected officials running on a campaign of doing nothing to address big social problems.
@agnophilo - I never said Republicans were the American people. And yes the vast majority of Americans want Obama Care repealed. It’s a boondoggle. It’s so horrible that Obama has had to hand out over 1000 waivers to keep his union and corporate cronies quiet until after the election.
@In_Reason_I_Trust - Well that’s interesting because the Obama campaign has embraced, “Obamacare”. “Happy birthday, Obamacare,” Jim Messina, the president’s campaign manager, wrote in an email to supporters last week to note the anniversary of the reform becoming law. (If you don’t believe me google Messina and obamacare.)
@agnophilo - It doesn’t look like health care prices will ever go do for better care. Anything the government has it’s fingers in the prices go up. Look at the “Cash for clunkers” program. Poor people can’t buy any cheap cars anymore because of the governments involvement.
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - Please explain your, “renegade supreme court” comment.
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - You are absolutely right. Anything the government gets involved with raises the price of it. The government’s function is to govern private enterprise, not to cross the line and be a business.
@Randy7777 - Two rulings come to mind:
1. Roe v Wade which legalized abortion and initiated a new Dark Age where mass murder became a matter of choice and privacy.
2. The Kelo decision which allowed a municipality to confiscate private property and give it to someone else in order to increase the tax base.
@agnophilo - The news media is constantly saying that a majority of Americans want Obamacare repealed. If you want to look at other countries that have universal health care you better look at their entire economy. It is not good and their health care is not good. If it was then why are they seeking to come to America for health care?
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - Show me a source that says that americans overwhelmingly support repealing the healthcare reform bills please, or go away.
@Randy7777 - Do you have actual figures for how the cost of used cars has gone up? And grocery prices are doubling for some items – did the government subsidize all of them too or is the economy just in the shitter?
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - I don’t put the blame on the supreme court. If we look at history when Christians were active the nation went in the way of righteousness, when they weren’t it went the other way. I believe we have the best system of government in the world and it’s up to us to learn how to us that system. More has been done to curb abortion in the last few years than since it was enacted.
@Randy7777 - The Supreme Court usurped power and neither the legislative nor the executive branches rose up to protect the Constitution from those oligarchs.
It is the purpose of government to protect human rights. The government violated the right to life and the right to property.
That is tyranny in action.
@agnophilo - 1st off please watch your language. Go try and buy a vehicle for under a couple thousand dollars like you could before “Cash for Clunkers”. Those cheap vehicles were destroyed. It hurt the poor people.
Source for majority of Americans wanting repeal: Gallup poll, Rasmussen Reports are just two. I googled, “majority of Americans want Obamacare repealed” and got a lot of hits.
By the way I said something was bull before I read your “watch your language” comment.
@agnophilo - You’ll just poo poo any source that disagrees with your alternate universal view. Do your own home work. And may I suggest getting away from Media Matters and the other leftist propaganda mills your get your junk from.
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - Agreed – the government did violate the right to life. My point is that the church can do something about it, if it would stand up and use the government like it was intended. When the church is silent the government goes into secular mode (deomocratic) away from the republic style of government that it was originally designed. The founding fathers designed for this to be a Christian nation ruled by God, through Jesus Christ. We have gone into a democratic style of government which is one of the worst styles of government on the face of the earth. We need to get back to:
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
@sometimestheycomebackanyway - I agree with you. (and I like the word poo poo -lol) agnophilo just wants to argue and won’t look at anything objectivly.
@agnophilo - It’s not an overwhelming majority, but Americans are pretty divided on the issue, with the majority in favor of repealing it: http://www.gallup.com/video/153566/Five-Need-Know-Findings-Americans-Views-Healthcare-Law.aspx (here’s a slightly older poll without a video: http://www.gallup.com/poll/152969/Americans-Divided-Repeal-2010-Healthcare-Law.aspx)
If the individual mandate is decided to be unconstitutional, I wouldn’t be overly surprised or even upset, but I will be pretty troubled if the rest of the health care law goes down with it. To me, the other provisions seemed basically like pretty logical and beneficial consumer protection laws. Of course, it’s amazing how quickly people forget that the mandate is a “compromise” originally drafted and championed by conservatives, just like “cap and trade” was a conservative (and free market) alternative to simplistic environmental standards. The objection to these things after they are suggested or enacted really just shows that “conservative” lawmakers really want the government to do nothing at all on these issues, even though government is the public’s official forum for regulating things that affect whole populations or large geographical areas. Party of status quo forever.
@vickevlar - Your link doesn’t say that a majority favor repealing the bill and my gallup link (which randy7777 deleted because it contained a four letter word) showed the reverse to be true, that a minority favored repeal in a recent poll. As for it being unconstitutional that is silly, it’s a tax incentive not a mandate – by that logic having to pay higher taxes if you’re single is a “government mandate” to get married and a violation of peoples’ civil and religious freedoms. That is ridiculous, congress has the power to tax people however they like (and regulate interstate commerce, and promote the general welfare).
@Randy7777 - What did I refuse to look at objectively? I asked you for a source for a claim, how is that not being objective?
@agnophilo - You discredit any source that doesn’t line up with your belief. You are a difficult person to have any discussion with.
@TheSchizoidMan - did you know that the average wait for an MRI scan in Canada is 18 months? That doesn’t sound like “minimal impact on quality of care”. and that there have been multiple lawsuits there because people under this “health care plan” are not receiving adequate, prompt treatment. The government is actually failing to appropriately cover them.
@ToLiveLoved - Great point
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2007/10/15/waittimes-fraser.html
what fires me up the most is that people are too ignorant to understand that THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT AFFORD TO COVER EVERY PERSON IN THIS COUNTRY. We don’t have any money as it is. Can people not do math?
Oh wait!!! We can just print more! That’s it. Whew! Glad I remembered that.
@ToLiveLoved - I’m aware that there are some delays in Canada, yes, and I’m also aware that there are some Canadians who find the wait annoying, to put it mildly, and who envy the fact that such delays are much more rare in the US than they are in Canada. Even at that, though, I am not aware of any Canadians who believe that their health insurance system should be discarded and replaced with a spaghetti-like mess such as ours. Far from it; every Canadian I’ve ever heard who talks about the way health insurance works in America sneers at it in contempt. In fact, I’ve never heard of any citizen of a country with universal health care saying that they wish their nation had a system like ours, not even the ones who admit that our “system” has a few advantages over theirs.
@TheSchizoidMan - I have only known two Canadians who needed health care. Guess where they came to get treatment? If it’s MY mother, diagnosed with breast cancer having to wait 10 weeks for radiation treatment, I’m not okay with that. If MY son tears his rotator cuff and has to wait 10 weeks for surgery, which then affects his outcome, again…..NOT okay with me. I think our system needs tweaking. Absolutely. To throw out the baby with the bath water, however, will be the beginning of the end for us in many ways. People are just “drinking the kool-aid”, I fear. Not thinking the whole thing through. I can’t get past the simple question of how does a broke government pay for it? If you can’t afford a new car, you certainly don’t go buy a new house. Right?
@ToLiveLoved - true. It could never work.
@Randy7777 - We’ll never know since you refuse to give a source. And the only source I’ve discredited here is the rasmussen poll because it only counts people they consider “likely voters” and therefore by definition is not a valid source in support of the claim that a majority of americans in general feel a certain way about the healthcare bill.
I’m sorry to use logic, facts and critical thinking on your blog, I know that can be a real bummer.
@ToLiveLoved - You think that’s bad – the wait time for a non-emergency MRI for someone without insurance in the US is… the rest of their short life. The wait time to die isn’t bad though.
When you have to treat everyone the lines are longer. The lines would be really short in the grocery store too if only some people got to eat.
Bear in mind also that they have actual government controlled hospitals, the equivalent of a nationwide VA health system – we need not do anything remotely like that to have universal coverage.
@ToLiveLoved - The countries with universal healthcare pay on average half what we do for medical care. It costs too much to pay 50% less as a nation for better service?
@ToLiveLoved - Or not get bogged down in wars that cost trillions of dollars and never end. Or not cut taxes when the deficit is skyrocketing. Or not deregulate the banking industry so they bring the economy to the brink of collapse.
@ToLiveLoved - Doesn’t anyone get that we already HAVE government health insurance in the US and people LOVE it? Do people on medicare have to wait 18 months to get an MRI? I don’t think so. So what is with the knee-jerk “we’re going to become canada” rhetoric?
@agnophilo - I have nothing else to say to you. You’ll just twist logic and make insulting comments.
@agnophilo - You’re right; I should have actually thought about it before I wrote “majority” rather than just “more Americans favor…” but I think that’s the important takeaway from the poll numbers (not that literally the majority have this opinion.) I think reform is necessary and it will happen in our lifetimes because healthcare costs are not going to go down again on their own, but now might not be the right time if that’s really how public opinion falls, whether it be ignorant or well-rationalized. I know that is an entirely candy-assed position, and that real people are affected in real ways while we wait for a “good” time to pass reform, but if it’s a political reality, so be it. It might even just mean waiting for a milquetoast, nonthreatening centrist democrat to come to power, removing the knee-jerk anti-Obama element. Haha, as if someone like that could ever get elected anymore.
@vickevlar - Obama IS a milquetoast, non-threatening centrist democrat. Or do you think he’s a secret muslim who pals around with terrorists and wants to subvert democracy one birth control pill at a time?
It’s about spin and power, not policy.
@agnophilo - The problem isn’t that he’s a centrist democrat; the problem is that his opponents REFUSE to see him that way because he is Barack Obama. I’m not saying that all these people who hate the bill would suddenly become more amenable to the idea if a boring, middle-age white dude who makes old people feel comfortable were president, but I don’t think they’d build up such a cohesive (and large) opposition, particularly because they’d lose the people who are just giving a direction to their anti-Obama sentiments. I might be overestimating how much hatred of the health care bill is tied to hatred of Obama, or I might be underestimating how badly republicans will refuse to see ANY leftist as centrist, non-threatening, etc. anymore (I can never tell if I’m giving Republicans too much or too little credit.) All I am saying is that if the supreme court strikes down the bill, putting aside the bad precedent it sets, it will be a shame but not the end of any hope for reform. …I don’t think.
@vickevlar - really? You’re going to bring race in this? Obama was asked if he believed Americans were racists. His reply was: I’m President.
@Randy7777 - Did I say that “Americans” are racist, or even all people who dislike Obama are racists? And to be clear, I am not saying that opponents of the health care bill dislike it because he’s black either. I said that opponents of the bill have more unified, directed political force because there was already fairly strong distrust in Obama, and it picks up all the people who just have a general dislike of him. I do think some of the distrust in Obama is racially motivated in some people, but the distrust is not just because of his skin color or his foreign-sounding name- I also said a “boring” and “middle-aged” guy, someone who doesn’t seem so “elitist” because of his educational background or the way he speaks, or someone who doesn’t have such a draw with young people, who tend to be more radical. It’s a combination of factors that make Barack Obama seem like a particularly objectionable democrat.
@vickevlar - Thanks for clarifying that. Personallity wise I like Obama, policy – I don’t agree with him.