Tricked again. The President himself is ultimately predictable. His formula: Address a pet issue: Since 2008 the President has said he would prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Make it URGENT (whether it is or not). Come up with an idea (whether it’s good or not) and respond to all critics the same way (Well, what would you do?).
And after all, only the deluded or ignorant who observe the President’s actions can abstain from any criticism. Instead they join the babyish, illogical and idiotic chorus of, “Well, what would you have done?”
So when did doing nothing as opposed to something that could be worse become bad? Would you want a physician who ignored the idea of FIRST DO NO HARM? That’s where urgency comes in, real or imagined. If you can sell something as urgent you can push through a bad deal. Back to the doctor, would you want a physician who ignored the idea of FIRST DO NO HARM? It depends. If you perceive your situation as dire, you might say, “Try anything.” That’s why selling URGENCY is the key to selling all Obama’s plans.
But you’ve got to ask: “Is it or was it urgent?” Certainly nothing has happened in the sense of a Pearl Harbor which could be considered "urgent." In the face of negative consequences, will you regret having done an obviously less than perfect something? Even Obama fetishists are usually not so far gone that they don’t see ANY problems with his ideas (though they dismiss them).
Once the deal’s done people tend to say, “Give it a shot,” ignoring the downside until the downside comes up and bites them. That's where the second part of the trick comes in. Pacify people with lies and half-truths about how good the plan is and time its most dangerous provisions to give the plan time to take root in our society.
So it was with Obamacare which remained OK until 2013 when we all got the surprise of our lives as the provisions of Obamacare carefully timed for 2014 kicked in. The law had years to root itself in our system so that now even critics believe that UNDOING is UNLIKELY, it’s simply the new problem creating new real or imagined urgencies as we live with it.
And so it is with Iran. Maybe having continued sanctions would have continued to work, but once the idea of urgency is sold people will hesitate to undo. But just like with Obamacare as the President presented his sunny-side of how good it is for the American people, we would be wise to show we’re capable of learning…Is this something better than having done nothing? Have you explored the timing provisions that allowed us to believe the ACA would be something good for Americans as a whole rather than segments of Americans who gained expanded Medicaid coverage (near-free health insurance and free health care)?
Unlike the President, we don't get to say it's not our problem after he leaves office. We live with the consequences of his actions. President Obama’s virtual silence about healthcare in the past year or two except to spout the same old lines that have already been disproven by reality should be more of a tell to the American people than the lies he spouted to sell it.
He considers it DONE still unable to admit that he lied about what the ACA is which is a grand design to save government money as a contributing payer to health insurance coverage by forcing people to buy health insurance in accordance with the insurance industry’s 2008 plan focusing on the smaller costs of preventive checkups as giveaways while increasing financial barriers to care when we're sick by raising copayments, coinsurance and deductibles and helping further reduce government expenses by taxing individuals and other stakeholders in the health insurance industry.
There’s timing in the Iran deal too. There are drawbacks patently evident in that deal too. And it is uncertain whether the imagined “URGENCY” required the tradeoffs we’re about to make. The real question for us should be, “Are we willing to take the chance just because it’s ‘something’ and we hate the idea of undoing ‘something’?”
The President speaks upside, he only speaks upside while hinting at the truth and talking about how those meanie opposition folks “MADE HIM” compromise. In other words, he could care less about the details as long as he can say he did something.
But the wrong thing is worse than nothing. If there’s one thing that the American people should do is to stop asking and challenging opposition to come up with something better. Maybe they can’t as leaders before them could not, that doesn’t mean the deal is good. Lack of Republican alternatives didn’t mean the Affordable Care Act was good and only the seriously strange individuals who have redefined the promises made to us about the law argue that it's "working.”
These issues, healthcare and dealing with Iran, have defied resolution by many people some and I would argue many wiser than the President. Unless you buy that something is urgent and therefore anything must be tried, you must consider that a bad deal is simply a bad deal and should not move forward.
That’s the challenge to Congress. Is there urgency? Are the concessions made as part of the deal so serious that the deal is unacceptable even if there is no alternative to the deal? Can they coherently put in the work to assess the deal and what it will mean to the American people and explain it so that we understand what is at stake?
Step one of trick two is that anyone asked, “What would you do?” must be brave enough to state and justify the obvious option…This has been an issue for years defying acceptable appeasement that would adequately protect US interests and this deal contains the following concessions and risks which are too great to accept merely for the smug satisfaction of privately going to a checklist and marking something as DONE. Anyone can make a bad deal.
