President Obama has shown his commitment to the green movement by giving a speech which contained 100% recycled material. Here’s the deal, if you call a big special meeting and invite all the press, a bunch of Senators and Congressman… if you make Ms. Nancy fly her Gulfstream off to get a new pantsuit and a Botox shot or two and ask 300 million Americans to tune in, you should say something we haven’t heard before.
There was a lot of leftover campaign rhetoric about bringing us together. The old “I’m bipartisan as long as you are willing to agree with what I want,” was in there. We got a shot of McCain smiling haplessly like he did when he suspended his campaign to go to Washington and get the financial crisis straightened out. President Obama hit all the talking points about what is and isn’t in a piece of legislation that really isn’t even written yet. Hey, who doesn’t like a little magic? At the end there was even a little recycled Kennedy too.
I will say there was one new figure in there. The President said there were 30 million uninsured Americans. In July he put the number at 47 million. Just by talking about health care reform for three months we have reduced the number of uninsured by more than 33%. If we just continue to talk, at this rate everyone will be insured by March! That’s change I can believe in!
Let me finish with a note on the behavior of James Wilson of South Carolina. Boorish? Yes. Uncouth? Yes. Disrespectful? Absolutely! Should he be reprimanded? Yes, right after Ms. Nancy relieves Charles Rangel of his committee chair for tax evasion. I ask you which is worse, being a rube or giving a daring digit to the IRS.
Not long ago we learned from Mr. Biden that paying our “fair share” is patriotic. Perhaps Mr. Rangel just isn’t that into patriotism.