SPEECH

After reading Matt Taibbi's doomsday assessment of the congressional health care reform bills (a must read!), I came home to find my dad "depressed" by how out of control our country has become. Obama's speech on the subject was excellent, which I found slightly consoling. I felt obligated to try to lift my dad's spirits, if temporarily, with the below email.

Dad:

The Dish corrals a lot of excited blogging about the prospects of the Obama speech. I don't expect a blog to make anyone feel much better, especially since I have Taibbi open in another tab pointing out ten trillion other ways my tax dollar is being criminally misappropriated, but I think we should appreciate the thought and effort Obama puts into ringleading the circus - a circus he neither created nor choreographed. He doesn't need to be any more thoughtful than the scoundrels on the congressional floor who are so removed from anything real going on in this country, just scampering towards money clips of lobbyists (and their corporate overlords) that should really all be in "for profit" private jails. (There would be plenty of room for real bad guys if the government stop prosecuting - and started regulating/taxing - non violent pot dealers!)

My favorite part of the speech was when he explained the public option in terms of public universities. This was not only easy to understand - there can be public healthcare (UC Davis) without the private sector (Harvard; bad example!) suffering - it was a correction of Obama's less-sound earlier analogy from June or July (when he compared a public option to the Post Office, private to Fed Ex). People need multiple easy-to-understand examples before they can even begin to understand actual issues. We are used to good/evil politics: countries without democracy, bad; surge, good. Everything was black and white in the Bush years, and the country is dumber because of it. For Obama to give everything the color needed to attract the interest of our fat, spoiled, disinterested country will probably take more time than he has.

All I'm saying is separate from the actual change he affects (which we should be critical of) he should also be judged on his effort and patience, because basically we're very lucky that even a single person in Washington cares.