Obama in defiant and combative form

Greetings readers,

I hope you are having a nice weekend. I am pretty busy at the moment, what with preparing to move back to London, flying to Berlin for a few days, and preparing for an interview with Fuck Buttons (apologies for the language to those of a more conservative disposition!). Anyhow, I thought I would squeeze in a short blog post about Obama and his recent speeches on health care to Congress and a large crowd in Minneapolis, respectively.

So on Thursday, Obama delivered an emphatic speech to Congress on his health care reform bill. My understanding was that he was not only garnering Democrat support, but alse appealing to moderate Republicans in order to forge some sort of middle ground. However, I must admit that I have only watched snippets of the speech, and read parts of the transcription, which you can find here, courtesy of the Huffington Post.

What I am aware of, and indeed the rest of America, is Republican Joe Wilson's outburst at Obama, calling him a liar, with respect to his claim that his health care reforms would not cover illegal immigrants (video clip below). As rude and impudent as this was, it only served to show quite how heated the health care debate has become, and what a bunch of uncouth idiots the Republicans seems to be. Although Rep. Wilson has made a public apology for his outburst, I am in no doubt that this will have (hopefully) affected his political career irreparably.



Obama then went on to make a further health care speech yesterday, to a large audience in Minneapolis; the largest city in Minnesota, a state in the north of the mid-west, which is apparently Democrat leaning and has a low proportion of uninsured inhabitants. In this speech Obama seemed defiant, combative and unyielding, in which he refused to accept no change on his domestic priority. He went on further to say he would not allow the special interests to "use the same old tactics to keep things the way they are", and went on to say rather defiantly, "I will not accept the status quo. Not this time. Not now". Strong words indeed. Check out the video, courtesy of the BBC, here.

Meanwhile, protesters in Washington marched from the White House to Capitol Hill, a path that I trod earlier in June this year. This was in in order to attack Mr Obama's administration for what it called out-of-control spending - on health care, the stimulus packages and the bailout of the banking and car industries. Clearly, a lot of Americans are also malcontented with the status quo.

I applaud President Obama's efforts for health care reform, a bill that would expand coverage to 97% of Americans. Yes, I appreciate that this would come at a cost of $900bn to the Americans, but surely it just isn't right for a quarter of the population of the richest country on Earth to have little or no access to decent health care at all? To me, equity is more important than efficiency, and further increases the relevancy and urgency of introducing cost-effectiveness measures in US health care policy. Americans, if you're reading this: surely it is achievable to create the same health outcomes at no extra cost. You just need to make it happen.

Currently listening to a mix by Move D, courtesy of The Bunker. Deep, groovy, and pulsating with old-skool house piano breakdowns and bags of soul. It has it all. David Moufang: you are a legend.

Thanks for reading,

F.