Want to know the  true significance of Barack Obama's speech on health care "reform" Wednesday night? Then just follow the money: Insurance Stocks Rise After Obama Speech (Truthdig):

Remember President Obama’s reference during his health care address to “Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations”? Well, those expectations were apparently met by that same address. Insurance company stocks got a boost from the speech, which foreshadowed the death of the public option and promised to deliver millions of currently “irresponsible” customers.

Truthdig then quotes Reuters:

Shares of U.S. health insurers climbed on Thursday after analysts saw no “game changers” from President Barack Obama’s highly anticipated speech on health reform.

Following the speech, analysts predicted any changes to the system would be moderate, with Obama backing many initiatives put forth earlier this week by a leading Senate committee. The possibility a threatening public health plan would be enacted also now seemed doubtful, analysts said.

Think about that: "No game changers." But isn't the point of reform to, you know, change the game?

But of course there will be no reform, and there was never going to be. Obama is going to "reform" America's broken health care system the same way he has "reformed" the War on Terror and "reformed" Wall Street: by taking the existing policies and making them even worse.

My old Moscow Times colleague Matt Taibbi nails the reality of the situation to the wall in his latest Rolling Stone piece: Sick and Wrong. In addition to detailing the deliberately engineered failure of any genuine "reform," Taibbi rightfully ties the health care debacle to the larger system failure of "the political entity known as the United States of America."

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Sean O'Neil said:

... But of course there will be no reform, and there was never going to be. Obama is going to "reform" America's broken health care system the same way he has "reformed" the War on Terror and "reformed" Wall Street: by taking the existing policies and making them even worse. You're correct, of course. Yet there are herds of Obama supporters who cheered his platitudes in his health care speech. The platitudes are all that some people need, sadly, because they are so trusting in the image of "hope and change" and so woefully lacking in healthy skepticism. It makes me wonder about Obama supporters still remaining out there, whether any of them ever has been burned by someone who promised one thing yet delivered another. Has none of them been jilted by a lying lover or spouse? None has been screwed over by a boss who promised a raise or promotion yet didn't deliver? Or do they have such experiences in their backgrounds, yet think that somehow Obama is not likely to do this to them, or that the Congress wouldn't ever do it to them? How do people watch the "bailouts" and assume Obama means well by the average American? How do they watch the escalation of things in Afghanistan, and believe that Obama is trying to change things for the better? How?

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September 11, 2009
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ralph spoilsport said:

I am Sick, so freaking Sick of this Dude When I heard the sell out to Big Insurance with the "forced participation" mandate, my temperature started rising. When I heard the bus running over "single payer", I starting aching. When I heard the "public option" was going to be as easy to get as a date with Angelina Jolie, I started sweating- and not in a good way. When I heard that John McCain was being given a high five, I got faint. When I heard the phony praise for Teddy K. (a man who has done more to screw us out of real health-care reform than almost anybody), I gave up and decided to heal myself.

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September 11, 2009
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Harpfool said:

Actions used to speak louder than words... All that matters anymore are words. No action required. The media will dutifully report the words, and so long as the words indicate that action has occurred or will occur, the sheeple rest eezee. So, if "reform" is said to have occurred, or to be about to occur, no one outside of this blog and a few others looks any further. If you were to go through every Obama speech and replace the word "action" (e.g. "now is the time for action") with the word "speech", I believe you would find a much closer relationship between words and, well, actions.

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September 11, 2009
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Jimmy Montague said:

You aren't paying attention, people -- The US is engaged in starting WW III. WW III is the biggest item on the fascist agenda. Only problem is figuring out how to start the blamed thing while making it look as if Uncle Sam is the aggrieved party. But that's where we're headed regardless. Nothing, not one person or issue, trumps WW III in the eyes of our fascist elite. They will have WW III before they'll consider having healthcare reform or anything else.

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Debbie Kimlin said:

	... My daughter and I were just discussing all these things(your last few posts) at lunch today. We, the people of the western world, have been brain washed to want and not to care. I tall appears to be going according to plan. It makes me so angry and so very frustrated.
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September 12, 2009
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Laila said:

When will the majority of Democrats wake up to the fact that they've elected Bush III Obama has to be the worst, most right-wing Democratic president I've seen in my lifetime. I've had problems with other Democrats in the past but I voted for them because at least they seemed to try to fight the Republican Party on important issues like health care. At least the left were allowed to criticize those Democrats without being attacked and accused of racism. I knew who Obama was back in 2007 so it amazes me that some Dems are only realizing that Obama is a corporatist and has always been an opportunist with absolutely no core beliefs. And the way his supporters and those in the media worship him as if he can do no wrong truly scares the crap out of me. I'll be sitting out the 2012 presidential election and can only hope that we get an acceptable and competent Democratic nominee in 2016.

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Katie said:

	Post from La Mamita Mala Hi Chris, Thought I'd send this post at http://flipfloppingjoy.com/200...as-change/ your way. Maybe you'll like it. -Katie
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September 14, 2009 | url
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Michael Allen said:

Remember this? Hats off to Paul Street, Glenn Ford, Adolph Reid and Ken Silverstein who warned us as to what to expect. I did the same in my "most progressive" town and the Obama groupies just plugged their ears. I've never seen anything like it. This from January 2008: When politicians offer nothing, and the people demand nothing, then the powers-that-be are free to continue doing whatever they choose. The death knell of participatory politics can often be a very noisy, celebratory affair - such as we have witnessed in the call-and-response ritual of "Change!" "Hope!" and other exuberant but insubstantial campaign exercises. After more than four years of observing Obama's descent from vaguely progressive rhetoric to shameless pandering and vapid "Change!" mantra nonsense are we to ignore the facts on the ground stick our heads in the sand and say never mind? Never mind that Obama voted for a business-friendly “tort reform” bill that rolls back working peoples’ ability to obtain reasonable redress and compensation from misbehaving corporations. Or that Obama claims to oppose the introduction of single-payer national health insurance on the grounds that such a widely supported social-democratic change would lead to employment difficulties for workers in the private insurance industry—at places like Kaiser and Blue Cross Blue Shield. Does Obama support the American scourge of racially disparate mass incarceration on the grounds that it provides work for tens of thousands of prison guards? Should the U.S. maintain the illegal operation of Iraq and pour half its federal budget into “defense” because of all the soldiers and other workers that find employment in imperial wars and the military-industrial complex? Does the “progressive” senator really need to be reminded of the large number of socially useful and healthy alternatives that exist for the investment of human labor power at home and abroad—wetlands preservation, urban ecological retrofitting, drug counseling, teaching, infrastructure building and repair, safe and affordable housing construction, the building of windmills and solar power facilities, etc.? In an interview with Klein, Obama expressed reservations about a universal health insurance plan recently enacted in Massachusetts, stating his preference for “voluntary” solutions over “government mandates.” The former, he said, is “more consonant with” what he called “the American character”—a position contradicted by regular polling data showing that most Americans support Canadian-style single-payer health insurance. Never mind Obama’s power-worshipping campaign book “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” (2006) – the book to which Obama refers reporters asking him for policy specifics behind his often vague statements – refers to the United States’ rapacious, savagely unequal and fundamentally “materialist” capitalist economy as the nation’s “greatest asset.” “Audacity” absurdly praises the “American system of social organization” and “business culture” on the grounds that U.S. capitalism “has encouraged constant innovation, individual initiative and efficient allocation of resources.” It commends “the need to raise money from economic elites to finance elections” for “prevent[ing] Democrats...from straying too far from the center” and for marginalizing “those within the Democratic Party who tend toward zealotry” and “radical ideas” (like peace and justice). It praises fellow centrist Senator and presidential rival Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for embracing “the virtues of capitalism” and applauds her “recognizably progressive” husband Bill Clinton for showing that “markets and fiscal discipline” and “personal responsibility are needed to combat poverty”– an interesting reflection on the militantly corporate-neoliberal Clinton administration’s efforts to increase poverty by eliminating poor families’ entitlement to public cash assistance and privileging deficit reduction over social spending. Never mind that “Audacity” also advances a model of health care reform that mocks his claim to support "universal" insurance. Like the [corporatist] Democratic Leadership Council Obama advocates retaining the for-profit nature of American health care, and mandating that poor people pay for it, somehow. His plan is only ‘universal’ in the sense that mandatory auto insurance is universal.

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September 14, 2009
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