Absurd and asinine analogies have been swirling for weeks by critics of the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare). They have compared it to Watergate, to slavery, to Iraq, and relentlessly to Hurricane Katrina. Their arguments are ridiculous and transparently political.
It is certainly within the realm of reason to oppose ObamaCare and articulate a case for pursuing a different solution to expand access to health care and lower costs for patients, businesses, and government. The only problem with that is that Republicans have no other solution. They are so fixated on repealing ObamaCare that they can’t be bothered with developing a plan that might actually help the American people. And in the process they are resorting to epic levels of overkill in order to characterize a glitchy website as the end of western civilization.
However, it’s one thing to employ hyperbole to advance a political agenda, and another to recruit a notoriously controversial figure to elevate that hyperbole to heretofore unspeakable heights. Yet that’s what Fox News has done by giving former Bush Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo, a platform to make grotesque assertions that diminish the tragic loss of life and property in the Gulf Coast due to Hurricane Katrina.
For those who don’t recall, Yoo is the author of the Bush administration’s legal justification for what they euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation,” but which the rest of the world calls torture. For someone who has advocated the use of barbaric tactics that have been denounced by the United Nations and the World Court, to compare health insurance reform to a natural disaster that took almost two thousand lives is reprehensible.
Yoo is probably the worst possible spokesman for this line of attack, given his resume. And he proves it with his opening argument that favorably differentiates Bush from Obama by saying that “Bush had to respond to unpredictable events,” such as “an act of war in Iraq.” Unpredictable? The act of war in Iraq was a deliberate, preplanned assault on a nation that had done nothing to incite it. The stipulated reasons for the invasion all turned out to be false. And the consequences for Iraq and the United States were costly in terms of both human life and actual expense. Yoo goes on to make this inexplicably inane assertion:
“Obama is hitting the shoals for the exact opposite reason. ObamaCare’s collapse does not result from an act of nature or the attacks of a foreign enemy. Instead, it is a perversely self-inflicted, man-made disaster that replaced the efficiency of the private markets with the tangle, confusion, and ideological bias of government bureaucracy.”
Once again Yoo falsely implies that the war in Iraq emanated from “the attacks of a foreign enemy.” Then he makes the delusional and unsupported statement that the private insurance markets were performing efficiently. Of course, if they were there wouldn’t have been 48 million people who were unable to get insurance due to cost or rejection for preexisting conditions. There also wouldn’t have been millions more who were paying for plans that provided little in the way of security, and that could be terminated entirely when a claim was filed. But the most grating rhetoric in Yoo’s screed is the repeated portrayal of ObamaCare as a “disaster” on par with, even worse than, Hurricane Katrina.
It is impossible to overstate the idiocy of an opinion that ranks a failed website rollout as inferior to the incompetence that left thousands to needlessly die in a great American city. Yoo dishonors the memory of the victims and insults the survivors. But coming from someone whose most significant professional achievement was to justify the use of torture, perhaps we should not be surprised. Neither should we be surprised that Fox News would embrace this cretin and his inhumane philosophy.
YOO: Which, of course, we’re totally not responsible for. Of course Katrina was Obama’s fault, and it’s treason to make these false accusations about the previous administration.
Are you sure that the Dems aren’t giving Yoo de Doo Doo his script to make the Republicans and Fox look even worse than they do already?
Although I enjoy the attack machine that is after the ACA – the GW Bush admin. group of criminals are the last group of people who should be attacking anyone – they set the bar for incompetence and criminality.
The only thing that Katrina and ACA have in common is, when people need help, the repubs say NO!
You forgot the other commonality – both events showed the incompetence of the chief executive and their administration at the time.
“Instead, it is a perversely self-inflicted, man-made disaster that replaced the efficiency of the private markets with the tangle, confusion, and ideological bias of government bureaucracy.”
It was that “efficiency” and the private markets gone wild that created a need to reign in the skyrocketing costs. As it turns out, the inflation rate for healthcare costs is at a fifty year low (1%) because of the ACA.
And BTW, John Boehner, Speaker of the House, (yeah, that John Boehner) signed up for Obamacare today without any glitches.
I guess that makes it all ok.
So, the Bonehead is a hypocrite too. And a betrayer of Tea Party principles. Good to know.
Isn’t it the law that states they (members of congress) must enroll – if so, he may be following the law, which would just make him law abiding, if not the law, then I’m not sure what it makes him.
Depends on whether the idiot continues to bash ObamaCare. Difficult to condemn something as evil when you just signed up for it. (Of course, he could always complain that he was FORCED to do that, but he’d have to do it in Pee Wee Herman’s voice).
When we – as citizens – bash a law we don’t like, what does that make us? Most of us choose to abide by the laws of this country, even when we don’t like them and we may continue to bitch about them – does that make all people who disagree an idiot. He, if I’m correct, didn’t vote for the law so bashing it would be consistent with his vote on this issue. You don’t like, him, fine, but following the law hardly makes him an idiot – the law was passed with zero support from the opposition party and polls really unpopular, maybe your criticism is a bit off in this case.
That isn’t the case for the “gun obsessionists”.
Remember their calls for an “insurrection”? A “march on “tyranny”?
How is that obeying laws?
Of course, it’s worse. The PPACA will show people the government can aid them against the rapacious Corporate monsters which have been stealing from and killing Americans in the pursuit of profit.
Whereas the Iraq War provided conservatives with their favorite past time hurting and killing brown people.
…..There were bodies in the streets….a destroyed city….this is absolutely infuriating…each time I hear hyperbolic batshit like this I get physically hot…how stupid can you get? That would be like comparing sandy to social security…why are the loudest also the dumbest?? You’d think being that stupid would hurt, wouldn’t you?? I mean…the botched response to one of the biggest natural disasters is akin to a law they don’t like….that’s fucking retarded.
Mark it’s funny how you care so much about terrorists being tortured but as a liberal don’t care about the American lives lost when we don’t gain information by using techniques like waterboarding. You also don’t write much about the torture of American’s in other countries. Like most liberals, you care more about our enemy being tortured than Americans being beheaded overseas. Then again as a liberal who hates America, I’m sure you believe the American’s deserve to be beheaded.
Waterboarding certainly isn’t pleasant. It isn’t meant to be, but compared to the torture methods used in the countries of our enemies it’s rather mild. Mark, why don’t you write an article on the torture methods used in Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan? Oh wait, I forgot the America left is in bed with terrorists from these countries so you wouldn’t want to do that anymore than you’d want to write an article on all the bald eagles being killed by the green lefties who keep building windmills.
I forgot the liberal rule about lefties not attacking other lefties. What a bunch of hypocrites you are.
That is one of the most ignorant comments ever posted on my website. Thanks. I like to get these so that everyone else can see how idiotic the right-wankers are.
Nice insight into the mind of a right winger.
First thing of all of course, is that the concern over torture techniques isn’t so much out of concern for the terrorists rather than concern over America’s own reputation. Reprehensible tactics like this are deemed reprehensible on grounds of arguments based on the principle of being HUMANE. Something someone like you clearly displays NO understanding of. It doesn’t matter how evil or bad they are, even criminals who break the law still have their right to not be subjected to inhumane treatment like torture because they are still human beings. That too is a concept lost on you, I’d wager you see terrorists as “animals with no such rights” or something along those lines and would love to argue about them on those principles.
Compounding that of course is the next part about how “liberals don’t care about Americans being tortured by others”. First of all liberals have shown just as much if not more concern for such happenings, but more important is the implication that “because they do it to us, we do it to them”. This sort of infantile “eye for an eye” thinking si what makes everyone go blind. You guys claim to be followers of Christ, yet you advocate here the exact opposite of “turning the cheek”. If the Allies in WW2 had had that sort of immature mentality that you have, there would be no Geneva convention because the Allies would have subjected Axis prisoners to the SAME sort of treatment as Allies prisoners under the Axis powers. Indeed that’s the scenario for today as well, if you’re going to treat your prisoners in such a manner, it will simply encourage them to do more of the same….as well as cause your allies to see you in a bad light.
The rest of it seems to be very much a pro-waterboard argument as well as a writing it off as “less than what other’s do to America”. Having already addressed the absurdity that because others do that to your own automatically mandates similar treatment of them by you, what you’re saying is the same as what Hannity said once on Fox, likely you were inspired by him. He followed that up by saying that he would prove it is “harmless” by being waterboarded for charity, a promise that to date, has NOT been kept. I suggest that you can do what he never had the guts to do to prove your point about waterboarding being “harmless”.
I think the potential failures in ACA demonstrate the weakness in relying on a for profit free market to meet people’s health needs. I have dealt with differing insurance companies for years and have witnessed patient struggles first-hand. Conservatives go on & on about how the govn can’t handle our health needs but why do they believe that the for profit free market can? It has already failed. If you force insurers to stop discriminating against the sick who desperately need insurance, then they raise all premiums to keep a high profit margin so consumers pay. Most developed countries in the world have some kind of govn sponsored solution for this reason. It is the profit driven insurance market that is causing the longer-term problem. I don’t see anything wrong with business making a profit BUT keeping healthcare in the hands of a business will mean sacrificing our lives & welfare for the sake of profit. It is the nature of the beast – and republicans accuse the democrats of not understanding reality? Life & death decisions should not be made by those prioritizing their bottom line as a primary goal!