Line in the Sand: Our Two Health Care Demands

While we have listed 20 reasons we cannot support Obamacare as it presently stands, prior to what it will face in the going-through-the-motions Senate/House conference committee guided by Obama behind the scenes, this is a good a time as any to list the two items the final Obamacare bill will need to contain to get our vote, along with a rationale for those two items.

First, a universal public option, like Medicare, for those without insurance and for those who would want to switch from their private plans, OR no mandatory insurance for those without a plan. We have been told that mandatory insurance is needed to cover the elimination of risk pools, such as preconditions, but it is clear that without a universal public option and with Obamacare protecting health care loopholes and profit level status quos, what is being proposed is that all Americans be forced to further support the vampire greed system of corporate health care. Obama's "reform" was supposed to eliminate this, but does not.

Secondly, a universal medicare plan for all American citizens abroad. This is fair, just, and doable. The simpliest method would be to set up medicare hospitals at all U.S. embassies, and cover transportation and housing costs for those who do not live in the embassay cities. This is what U.S. citizens must presently do to receive quality health car without any U.S. governmental assistance. If this smacks of providing an additional health care benefit to a limited group of American citizens, you should work hard to defeat Obamacare, because the bill is and will be filled with such provisions created by congressmen on both sides of the aisle and tend to benefit much smaller and far more wealthy groups than those abroad.
--Jerry Politex

Obama's Private Gunmen Not Held Accountable

In throwing out charges against Blackwater agents who killed 17 Iraqis in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in September 2007, Judge Urbina highlighted the government’s inability to hold mercenaries accountable for crimes they commit....During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton competed over who would take the toughest line against mercenaries. It is clear that the only way for President Obama to make good on the rhetoric is to get rid of the thousands of private gunmen still deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere....

Reliance on contractors allows the government to work under the radar of public scrutiny. And freewheeling contractors can be at cross purposes with the armed forces. Blackwater’s undersupervised guards undermined the effort to win Iraqi support. But most fundamental is that the government cannot — or will not — keep a legal handle on its freelance gunmen. A nation of laws cannot go to war like that.
from NYT Ed

Wall Street's Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction

Most of us are still ignorant about what Warren Buffett called the “financial weapons of mass destruction” that wrecked our economy. Fluent as we are in Al Qaeda and body scanners, when it comes to synthetic C.D.O.’s and credit-default swaps, not so much. What we don’t know will hurt us, and quite possibly on a more devastating scale than any Qaeda attack. Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin. Without that reckoning, there will be no public clamor for serious reform of a financial system that was as cunningly breached as airline security at the Amsterdam airport. And without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed. Now that it can count on government bailouts, Wall Street has more incentive than ever to pump up its risks — secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we get stuck with the losses.
more from Frank Rich

The Real Top Ten Stories of the Past Decade

10.Obama and the meaninglessness of elections: This is the most embittering revelation of all. Despite the greatest electoral majority since Johnson crushed Goldwater in '64, Barrack Obama has betrayed everything he ran on. In every case where he had the opportunity to confront power — in financial bailouts, financial regulation, health care, wars and military spending, utilities and global warming, national surveillance — Obama has sided with the rich and powerful against the interests of the American people. He has probably engendered more cynicism, more disaffection with government than any president since Richard Nixon. It will deal a staggering blow to the hopes of mobilizing masses of people again for a real takeback of government. And he's not even one year into it.
more from Robert Freeman

Our Obama Strategy Seconded

The core of Obama is a man who is a cautious politician. That is what he is at his center. He can’t help himself. Asking him to be something else is asking a rock to be a little less hard. He is what he is...Right now, Obama perceives the center of the country to be somewhere between Dick Cheney and Harry Reid. Do you know where that leaves him? Joe Lieberman. That’s why we’re in the sorry shape we’re in now...If we are to have any hope that Obama will move further left (and much closer to the true center of the country), we have to attack Obama relentlessly from the left. Right now he is a giant that is unmoved by anything in his left flank, he keeps looking to his right and ducking and worrying and moving to accommodate them. They are so loud and so visible. It’s hard to miss them. We have to make him look left. We have to shake him off his foundation.

You inflict political pain by voting things down. So far progressives have been completely unwilling to do this. They got rolled on healthcare because they had no intention of putting their foot down – and everyone knew it. The next time Obama pushes a corporate agenda...deny him.... And make a big stink out of it. Draw everyone’s attention to how far right Obama is and how out of whack he is with the American people. If that scares you and you start to worry about damaging a Democratic president, you’re never going to win at this game. You’re never going to get the policies you want. They don’t listen to reason, they listen to power.
more from Cenk Uygur

Policy Statement

White House Watch is the travel blog used by Jerry Politex when he's on the road. It combines the interests of JoeBama Watch, founded in 2008, and Bush Watch, founded in 1998. These two sites will continue to be updated when Politex is at home.

Given the similarities between President Bush (43) and President Obama (44) during the latter's first year in office, it seems appropriate that we view him as a continuation of numerous foreign and domestic policies of his predecessor, hence the change in title focus from the man to the office.

If you've followed Bush Watch and JoeBama Watch through the most recent presidential campaign, you know that we've always considered Obama to be a moderate, not a progressive, so his strategies and decisions have not been a total surprise. We share Paul Krugman's recent comment in his NYT blog that those idealists who voted for Obama in the name of "change" should have known better. What is surprising, however, is how far he has drifted right and how many of his campaign promises he has broken.

Unfortunately, what Obama appears to be doing was called "triangulation" when Clinton did it. Under the strong guidance of his two major advisers, Rahm Emanuel and David Axlerod, Obama's main goal is to win a second term, not to satisfy the needs of those who worked so hard to put him in office. It's up to you to decide if this decision is in your best interests.
--Politex