Yea for Health Care?

The Senate passed their version of health care this morning...5 AM my time, which meant I woke up to a pleasant surprise. You know it must be helping Americans out to some extent when the GOP attorney generals plan on suing to analyze the constitutionality of telling Americans they must have health care and then providing them with potentially cheap alternatives!!! Really!?! I should sue them because it is mandatory to have a driver's license which costs me money every five years to renew; the constitution says nothing about the government's right to regulate my operation of a motor vehicle. Or, more germane (and so much more ironic): why does every child, until the age of 16, have to go to school. Public school (or the alternatives) is compulsory. I should contact my GOP representatives and ask them to review the constitutionality of that one. Oh yeah, and the state provides (in the "public option") a cheaper alternative to the more expensive private and prep schools. Which, by the way, are not hurting due to the competition with the more robust and affordable public option.

What do I not like? I do not like the weakness of the Senate and the lack of a public option. What is strange to me is this: the democrats won a majority across the board. This was the public voting for some change. Instead of embracing the larger vision Obama presented that won him so much support, they hedged, allowed the GOP to reshape the narrative over the summer, which painted them into a corner (especially those in precarious seats). The public either (a) recoiled in fear of a socialist takeover, (b) recoiled in disgust at the lameness, lack of vision, and lack of balls exhibited by the vast majority of democratic senators, or (c) recoiled in fear over (b) and over the crazy teabaggers whose inane arguments were dominating the airwaves and making (b) even worse! I am going with (c) on this one.

My second thought is this (and it will be a run-on sentence). If the economy keeps stabilizing, and health care is passed through congress and not by Obama personally ramming it through, and, Obama passes the next stimulus meant to reward job creation and benefit normal people, and the Wall Street legislation does indeed regulate them more efficaciously...could we not call that a successful first year? Also, the surge in Afghanistan may end up being a very good decision as it was in Iraq, and may help prepare for a real withdrawal in both war zones. We live in a strange time, my friends. A time where judgments are passed so quickly and rescinded almost as quickly. Obama is not going to be Roosevelt; he was not as prepared as Roosevelt. Obama is going to do something that impacts the American people, and I think it will be either benign or positive, because he does not seem committed to destroying the universe much like Bush and Cheney were.