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Ken Adelman

Ken Adelman

Posted: March 28, 2010 06:40 PM

The Bard Blog

What's Your Reaction:

Surveying last week, William Shakespeare offers these blog-servations:

"Zounds! We were never so bethumped with words" (King John), which continue to flood the airwaves even after final passage of the health care bill. Quite apt, since the bill itself became a collection of "paper bullets of the mind," as Benedict says in Much Ado About Nothing.

Yet this is much ado about something - a bill of more than 2,000 pages, with sundry amendments of up to 383 pages. Both the legislation and its process reflect Macbeth's quip: "Confusion hath made his masterpiece."

Nonetheless, the votes constituted a big win for the Obama Administration and its backers, who reacted with near-euphoria: "O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!" (As You Like It).

Few Republicans said so, but at least some recognized the Congressional passage as a defeat. They could console colleagues: "Be cheerful. Wipe thine tears. Some falls are means the happier to arise." (Cymbeline).

Whether Republican fortunes will arise depends on how they perform on the political stage after the Congressional recess. Thus far, their words satisfy their backers. Yet many independents listen to them on incendiary cable TV talk radio shows and feel, "You cram these words into mine ears, against the stomach of my sense" (The Tempest).

 
 
 
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08:55 PM on 03/29/2010
I find it interesting that Congress is now making some big corporations come to testify as to how and why they came to their numbers (bottom lines) being affected by Obamacare. At&t, 3M, Verizon, Catepillar (one of Obama's favorite groups). No doubt Congress wants them there to demonize them, this is standard for the Obama administration. And we know that their bottom lines are affected due to the stoppage of the tax incentives on the prescription drug program for their retirees. So now these companies are faced with: laying off people, reducing retirement benefits, or etc All of these things affect our economy in the bigger picture.

I think one of the reasons Congress wants them there, besides demonizing them, is to find out what was in the bill that no one even read. Like how did these companies find out the downside that they all missed.
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epcraig
After a couple of strokes...
06:30 PM on 03/29/2010
I'll vote for the next Republican who appears on myu ballot after explicitly endorsing the old Republican plank of trust-busting (which got both Presidents Roosevelts' endorsement when each ran).
Bernique
Solar is clean, cheap and plentiful
05:58 PM on 03/29/2010
"Few Republicans said so, but at least some recognized the Congressional passage as a defeat". Not just "few republicans", but many progressives, too. Wish I had a Shakesperian quote for that!
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TJCole
05:14 PM on 03/29/2010
How about this one...

"What young egg, thou frye of treachery..?"
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leonhardsr
Navy Vet
04:51 PM on 03/29/2010
The health bill is ridiculus. Would any one with a half of a brain buy a health insurance policy with out reading it.The President a harvard Lawyer , And many other lawyers in congress better go back to grade school. When will the Public realize what they voted for in the High Goverment offices.
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03:13 PM on 03/29/2010
This complaint about the 2000 page length of the health bill is a total canard. In the annals of legislation, it is not particularly large. For example, many trade bills of considerably narrower scope are much longer. The fact that the average number of words per page (~160, analyzed from an earlier version of HR3200) and that it is written in fulsome legalese also contributes to its apparent length.
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04:00 PM on 03/29/2010
It's too funny. Republicans have spent a year talking and parading the 2000+ pages of
the bill through the media like it was a hand puppet.

Your right, I checked the bill too a while back, average of nine words per line and
doubled spaced.

Republicans, tell me how many pages does it take to make a Health Care Reform Bill?

Joanne
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Ipanemagirl
progressive
05:20 PM on 03/29/2010
theirs only had 4 pages, mainly, cut taxes for the rich,,,hi hi hi
05:33 PM on 03/29/2010
Yes, but did you read the entire bill? Apparently no one in Congress did, as I just read that the insurance industry has already found a loophole in the bill that allows them to postpone insuring children with pre-existing conditions, from September 2010 until 2014. Nice going, Congress.

Democrats, tell me how many pages does it take to get a Health Care Reform Bill correct?
03:07 PM on 03/29/2010
I' can't help but wonder if Shakespeare had politicians in mind when he wrote

"I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true 'The empty vessel makes the greatest sound'."
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Halyn
04:09 PM on 03/29/2010
Excellent quote .. :))
01:35 PM on 03/29/2010
he government already has the money to pay for the public option and universal health care.
http://whitecollargreenspace.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAB4wy_eWWw
How do we explain to our children that we tried for 100 years to get universal health care and the bill signed by President Obama on 3/23/10 still leaves 15 to 25 million without health insurance. In America money rules. We have stooped so low that we can spend billion$ to keep financial and manufacturing corporations and foreign countries alive but we cannot do the same or our friends, neighbors, and relatives.

Here is a proposal that will save the Federal government close to $50 billion per year enough to pay for the public option with only an executive order. Most office space is very expensive yet white collar workers only use it 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. This amounts to only 30% efficiency which is completely unacceptable in today's economic and ecological environment. We can no longer afford to let all white-collar workers that still have jobs work banker's hours when we can work two shifts per day in government and private industry and cut our overhead costs in half. This simple paradigm shifts solves three problems: It jumpstarts economy and fights poverty, cuts pollution, reduces budget deficits. It is simple based on sound economic principles, will save money instead of adding to the deficit and would only require an executive order.
11:35 AM on 03/29/2010
As an Independent I can relate...."You cram these words into mine ears, against the stomach of my sense" (The Tempest). Where has all the common sense gone. Nothing makes much sense anymore.
10:11 AM on 03/29/2010
To Avert Financial Catastrophe; Finish Health Care Reform by Adding a Low Cost Public Option to Fund and Deliver All Government Funded Care to Save Lives, Jobs and $1 Trillion Annually.

Employers could optout of paying for or being involved with health care which employees would receive for free from the Public Option.

Public Option users would never have to pay another insurance premium, medical service co pay fee, or any prescription costs and everyone who wants it could have it no restrictions.

An amendment to the new bill that would add a Free Public Option, run by the government, which eliminates insurance companies and uses sales taxes to pay for care which would then be delivered free from government hospitals, could produce the drastic cost savings which will be required to save us from the horrific costs of the new bill and existing mandated programs.

The easiest way to create a true Public Option, and the only way to cut costs, is not to use the Medicare model, which still brings the private provider high cost baggage with it, but instead to use the VA’s model of government staffed hospitals, and to use sales tax funding instead of insurance, to create a new stand alone system.

Medicare and Medicaid could easily be salvaged without bankrupting the federal government by using a Public Option system to deliver all care and medications to all recipients totally free and at a fraction of government’s current costs now devoured by private systems.
03:27 PM on 03/29/2010
Sir, you are 100% correct, the VA model is the only solution, but unfortunately in this country big money rules and there is BIG money in medical care
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Halyn
04:13 PM on 03/29/2010
The VA Hospitals with which I am familiar are a disgrace to the military. They are substandard in almost every area .. including staffing. IMHO.
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09:59 AM on 03/29/2010
Adelman cites the number of pages in the bill as if each page is evidence in a criminal conspiracy: Yes, he says, we have 2000 + pieces of evidence. Baloney! Any bill could be simple and straightforward if people were more inclined to justice and compassion than to deceit and self-centeredness. Then errors would invariably favor the poor and the weak, rather than the rich and the powerful. But that is not the world we live in. In our world, conservatives invoke the name of Jesus to encourage self-centeredness, hatred and anger. This is because conservatives, philosophically, believe that the majority of people are unethical and base, unworthy of their support. Contrary to the Constitutional ideal of promoting the common good, they believe, with Calvin, that those with power and wealth are self-evidently worthy and those without it are self-evidently unworthy. This, in turn, is not unrelated to the Texan conservative move to institute changes in textbooks on American history.
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MikeLawson
Still to the Left, still Right for it
02:12 PM on 03/30/2010
Were it possible to fan you again I would do so.
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Dredd
Our government is a wartocracy.
09:33 AM on 03/29/2010
Don't worry Ken, the courts will sort it all out for us ... ;)

http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/03/rise-of-machine-hypocrisy.html
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HUFFPOST COMMUNITY MODERATOR
blisster
Need more micro-bio fuel for my mitochondria
09:08 AM on 03/29/2010
"Whereof what's past is prolog, what to come, of your and my discharge".
We will not build upon Bush league ideology.
09:06 AM on 03/29/2010
The bigger the corruption the more complicated the bill becomes as they start selling off rights and putting in provisions and loopholes for those that pay the most. Medicare for all would not have provided such an opportunity for the politicians to strike deals for money. it is really that simple.
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Kane
Now with 20% More Fiber!
05:06 AM on 03/29/2010
"Whether Republican fortunes will arise depends on how they perform on the political stage after the Congressional recess."

Mr Adelman, I believe that we all know how Republicans will perform after returning from the Congressional recess. Republicans have made it quite clear that obstruction (along with a good dose of slash and burn) is their only option. They have painted themselves into this corner, and now they have no alternative but to hope that it's a winning strategy. With broad strokes, the Republicans have painted the president from everything to communist to a racist, to questioning his citizenship to arguing that he wants to pull the plug on everyone's granny. Even if Republicans wanted to move to the center to appeal to independents, doing so would alienate their base. How could they possibly expain to the teabaggers that suddenly it would be a good thing to work with a president that they have maligned for two years? FOX, along with the bombastic Limbaugh and Beck would have none of it. In either direction, that way madness lies.

No, I will weep no more. In such a night
To shut me out? Pour on; I will endure.
In such a night as this? O Regan, Goneril!
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all—
O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.

King Lear Act 3, scene 4
03:30 PM on 03/29/2010
Madness is indeed ruling in the GOP
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MikeLawson
Still to the Left, still Right for it
02:13 PM on 03/30/2010
Kane, you've been fanned.