-By Warner Todd Huston
Obama is just about to ride his “skycycle” over the edge of Snake River Canyon, right to certain disaster.
Barack Obama is rushing headlong off the healthcare cliff despite rising calls to slow the debate so that lawmakers can wrap their heads around the whole thing. Even liberal Douglas Elmendorf, Harvard trained and member of the leftist Brookings Institute, is practically begging Congress to slow down and deliberate with the attention the whole enterprise deserves.
Elmendorf is a true believer in healthcare “reform,” too. He believes in a massive, socialist take over of healthcare by the government. But even he is saying that the bills currently under consideration are a mess that will cause more trouble in healthcare than they will fix. His primary concern is that the legislation being considered would cause wild increases in healthcare costs despite the claim by Obama that such costs will come down.
Recently Elmendorf warned Congress that, “The health care overhauls released to date would increase, not reduce, the burgeoning long-term health costs facing the government.”
Obama is paying no heed to warning from left, center and right, however. He wants what he wants and he wants it now. In an appearance at the Children’s National Medical Center, Obama said that, “The need for reform is urgent, and it is indisputable.” He went on to urge a speedy adoption of his healthcare prescriptions.
As he told his audience that speed was of the essence, though, polls are showing that the president’s approval rating on the healthcare issue has slipped below 50% approval for the first time. Voters are beginning to smell a rat on healthcare. Or maybe they are sensing a snake?
Remember the disastrous Snake River Canyon stunt pulled off by Evil Knievel in 1974? The motorcycle stuntman had a steam powered “skycycle” built with which he intended to jump over Snake River Canyon, Idaho. The whole thing was a mess of great proportions. After the big show and the launch, there were massive systems failures causing the “skycycle” to prematurely launch its parachute. That failure, in turn, caused the machine to fall back towards its launch point with the result that the “skycycle” landed essentially only a few yards away from where it launched. Worse, Knievel would have died if the thing landed in the river because his safety harness jammed and he couldn’t get out of the thing. He only escaped death by pure luck.
Barack Obama is a modern Evil Knievel mounting his ramshackle “skycycle” and readying to launch himself into the mouth of death and ridicule. It wouldn’t be so bad if only he, like the Evil Knievel of 1974, paid the price of this folly. Unfortunately, this disaster won’t just be amusing television. We will all be hurt by this fiasco.
(Cross posted at HealthCareHorseRace.com.)
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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