US Healthcare Reform

[Happy Face 29]

 

 

 

[tooner 243]

 

Thanks Cid.

 

It was a tad zut alors. My overriding assumption is that he was a mentalist, but then I was in some bizarre offshoot of France...

 

Are they still wanting to seccede from Canada? Haven't heard much about that lately. When they were making a big stink over it, the Habs were pitiful. I've always had a theory that Montreal's destiny as a province is largely dependent on how good or bad the Habs are playing at the time.

 

I have no idea what a tad zut alors is.

 

 

Nah, they know they have it pretty good here.

 

Montreal is a city in Quebec.

 

Zut Alors=DAMN!!=BLIMEY!!

 

Personally I think that Health Care (here and the US) needs to stop being run as a business, it's people not clients or numbers. The government is supposed to have the public's best interest at heart. If someone is dying of cancer and there is a treatment for it, they should get it, end of story. Healthcare in Canada is far from perfect, but there are more people excluded from Healthcare in the states than we have citizens ffs.....seems a bit f'ed up.

[Cid_MCDP 0]

 

Thanks Cid.

 

It was a tad zut alors. My overriding assumption is that he was a mentalist, but then I was in some bizarre offshoot of France...

 

Are they still wanting to seccede from Canada? Haven't heard much about that lately. When they were making a big stink over it, the Habs were pitiful. I've always had a theory that Montreal's destiny as a province is largely dependent on how good or bad the Habs are playing at the time.

 

I have no idea what a tad zut alors is.

 

 

Nah, they know they have it pretty good here.

 

Montreal is a city in Quebec.

 

Zut Alors=DAMN!!=BLIMEY!!

 

Personally I think that Health Care (here and the US) needs to stop being run as a business, it's people not clients or numbers. The government is supposed to have the public's best interest at heart. If someone is dying of cancer and there is a treatment for it, they should get it, end of story. Healthcare in Canada is far from perfect, but there are more people excluded from Healthcare in the states than we have citizens ffs.....seems a bit f'ed up.

 

Geez- nothing like a typo to make me look like the typical ignorant American.

 

I swear, I meant to type Quebec instead of Montreal that second time! Being a hockey fan, the sucession talk was kind of a big deal there a few years ago when Quebec was talking about bonking out of Canada. Don't know why- it isn't like they'd suddenly be kicked out (Montreal was one of the "Original Six" hockey teams in the NHL- being in Canda, I'm sure you already know this; just mentioning it for the cheap seats) of the league.

 

Totally agree with your sentiments on us and healthcare though- it's ridiculous that we have a political party that is all about Right To Life but won't get on board for un-corporatizing healthcare. Course, these are the same people that are also pro-death penalty, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

 

(BTW- the other one is no better- pro-welfare but no healthcare? Uh, ok...)

 

Soaring medical inflation depresses Americans’ standard of living and threatens to bust the budget. The system is riddled with waste. Yet most Americans feel little urge to make it more efficient. When asked if insurance firms should be obliged to pay for expensive treatments that have not been proved more effective than a cheaper alternative, 56% say yes.

 

 

I can tell you exactly how that conclusion was arrived at and it is in no way indicitive of how we feel about medical inflation or efficiency- the line of thinking would be something along the lines of, "I pay for insurance, they should pay for my care." Since most Americans don't "directly" pay for their healthcare, they have no interest in making the process more efficient.

 

That aside, we really don't have any say in the matter one way or another. This country's government is firmly in the pocket of corporations and their lobbies. Even if we did all suddenly wake up one day and demand the process become more efficient, it'd never happen. Saying we feel little urge to make things more efficient is akin to saying the American people feel no urge to make NASA more efficient because of the Challenger or Columbia disasters, or that we feel no urge to make the FBI and CIA more efficient because of 9/11. We have no say in something like that. We should be on the hook for a lot of things, but apathy towards medical inflation shouldn't be one of them.

Edited September 11, 2009 by Cid_MCDP

[Cid_MCDP 0]

Hey, so all this being said...

 

There's all kinds of stories in our press about the Canadian and UK systems ultimately being worse than ours- long waits for emergency care, expensive or extremely technical procedures not being "approved" (or whatever), stuff like that.

 

I know first hand that our media can seldom if ever be believed when it comes to stuff like this, but for the sake of my own perspective on these things, what would you, any of you, describe as being the shortcomings of your (respective) nationalized healthcare systems? I'm pretty well aware of the problems with ours, just wondering if the alternative really is worse.

Edited September 11, 2009 by Cid_MCDP

[Renton 17876]

Hey, so all this being said...

 

There's all kinds of stories in our press about the Canadian and UK systems ultimately being worse than ours- long waits for emergency care, expensive or extremely technical procedures not being "approved" (or whatever), stuff like that.

 

I know first hand that our media can seldom if ever be believed when it comes to stuff like this, but for the sake of my own perspective on these things, what would you, any of you, describe as being the shortcomings of your (respective) nationalized healthcare systems? I'm pretty well aware of the problems with ours, just wondering if the alternative really is worse.

 

In all honesty I don't think the UK NHS has many shortcomings at all. Some of the most expensive treatments with least proven benefit are not available on the NHS, that's about it. Otherwise, everything else is covered. Also, waiting lists are now right down to acceptable levels imo. My Dad, for instance, is in the process of having his second elective knee replacement. He could pick the time to suit him and he won't pay a penny. Of course, there will be some negative anecdotes too, but overall people here appreciate the NHS and are rightly proud of it. And of course, it costs a fraction of what you pay.

 

That aside, we really don't have any say in the matter one way or another. This country's government is firmly in the pocket of corporations and their lobbies. Even if we did all suddenly wake up one day and demand the process become more efficient, it'd never happen. Saying we feel little urge to make things more efficient is akin to saying the American people feel no urge to make NASA more efficient because of the Challenger or Columbia disasters, or that we feel no urge to make the FBI and CIA more efficient because of 9/11. We have no say in something like that. We should be on the hook for a lot of things, but apathy towards medical inflation shouldn't be one of them.

 

Not sure I follow this. You have a president who has recognised the problem and is trying to fix it, and is being called worse than Hitler from a large section of the public for doing so. You live in a democracy, the mechanism for change is there, unfortunately at least 50% of your population are retards.

[ChezGiven 0]

The DoH for Eng/Wales is actually committed to sorting out the discrepancy in survival rates from cancer in the UK and the rest of the leading economies in Europe.

 

Their solution? Pay for Mckinsey to sort it out! Just what was needed, more management consultants.

[ewerk 26600]

Their solution? Pay for Mckinsey to sort it out! Just what was needed, more management consultants.

 

All aboard the gravy train!

[Fop 1]

The DoH for Eng/Wales is actually committed to sorting out the discrepancy in survival rates from cancer in the UK and the rest of the leading economies in Europe.

 

Their solution? Pay for Mckinsey to sort it out! Just what was needed, more management consultants.

 

 

Bring in the Phoenix Four + Kevin Howe - sorted.

[ChezGiven 0]

Their solution? Pay for Mckinsey to sort it out! Just what was needed, more management consultants.

 

All aboard the gravy train!

 

I've seen their plan too. Looks like a money-spinner for them.

[ewerk 26600]

Just wait to the add-ons and further work they'll try to get out of it. The amount of money wasted by government bodies on consultants is shocking.

[tooner 243]

 

Thanks Cid.

 

It was a tad zut alors. My overriding assumption is that he was a mentalist, but then I was in some bizarre offshoot of France...

 

Are they still wanting to seccede from Canada? Haven't heard much about that lately. When they were making a big stink over it, the Habs were pitiful. I've always had a theory that Montreal's destiny as a province is largely dependent on how good or bad the Habs are playing at the time.

 

I have no idea what a tad zut alors is.

 

 

Nah, they know they have it pretty good here.

 

Montreal is a city in Quebec.

 

Zut Alors=DAMN!!=BLIMEY!!

 

Personally I think that Health Care (here and the US) needs to stop being run as a business, it's people not clients or numbers. The government is supposed to have the public's best interest at heart. If someone is dying of cancer and there is a treatment for it, they should get it, end of story. Healthcare in Canada is far from perfect, but there are more people excluded from Healthcare in the states than we have citizens ffs.....seems a bit f'ed up.

 

Geez- nothing like a typo to make me look like the typical ignorant American.

 

I swear, I meant to type Quebec instead of Montreal that second time! Being a hockey fan, the sucession talk was kind of a big deal there a few years ago when Quebec was talking about bonking out of Canada. Don't know why- it isn't like they'd suddenly be kicked out (Montreal was one of the "Original Six" hockey teams in the NHL- being in Canda, I'm sure you already know this; just mentioning it for the cheap seats) of the league.

 

Totally agree with your sentiments on us and healthcare though- it's ridiculous that we have a political party that is all about Right To Life but won't get on board for un-corporatizing healthcare. Course, these are the same people that are also pro-death penalty, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

 

(BTW- the other one is no better- pro-welfare but no healthcare? Uh, ok...)

 

Soaring medical inflation depresses Americans’ standard of living and threatens to bust the budget. The system is riddled with waste. Yet most Americans feel little urge to make it more efficient. When asked if insurance firms should be obliged to pay for expensive treatments that have not been proved more effective than a cheaper alternative, 56% say yes.

 

 

I can tell you exactly how that conclusion was arrived at and it is in no way indicitive of how we feel about medical inflation or efficiency- the line of thinking would be something along the lines of, "I pay for insurance, they should pay for my care." Since most Americans don't "directly" pay for their healthcare, they have no interest in making the process more efficient.

 

That aside, we really don't have any say in the matter one way or another. This country's government is firmly in the pocket of corporations and their lobbies. Even if we did all suddenly wake up one day and demand the process become more efficient, it'd never happen. Saying we feel little urge to make things more efficient is akin to saying the American people feel no urge to make NASA more efficient because of the Challenger or Columbia disasters, or that we feel no urge to make the FBI and CIA more efficient because of 9/11. We have no say in something like that. We should be on the hook for a lot of things, but apathy towards medical inflation shouldn't be one of them.

 

 

.........hahaha, no worries i thought about editing my post b/c your posts on here don't fit the american stereotype

[tooner 243]

Hey, so all this being said...

 

There's all kinds of stories in our press about the Canadian and UK systems ultimately being worse than ours- long waits for emergency care, expensive or extremely technical procedures not being "approved" (or whatever), stuff like that.

 

I know first hand that our media can seldom if ever be believed when it comes to stuff like this, but for the sake of my own perspective on these things, what would you, any of you, describe as being the shortcomings of your (respective) nationalized healthcare systems? I'm pretty well aware of the problems with ours, just wondering if the alternative really is worse.

 

 

There are problems with Canadian Healthcare for sure, lack of MD's in rural areas, long emergency waits and redundant bureaucratic red-tape being the big ones.

 

Lack of MD's......... not too bad if you live in a major center (lower mainland BC, Calgary, MONTREAL haha, Toronto etc.) but if you happen not to live close to a major center you could be looking at as much as a day's drive or in some cases a plane ride to get to the treatment or MD that can help you. Inconvenient yes, but when you arrive you get treatment , end of story.

 

Long emergency waits............My Mom was a Triage/Emergency Room nurse for 35 years, biggest issue with wait times is people that don't need to be there clogging up the system. If your kid has a rash on his/her ass........that is not a reason to be in the emerge, go see your doctor, if you don't have a doctor go to a clinic. If your kid (and this really happened) HAS BEEN SPRAYED BY A SKUNK!!!........that is not a reason to be in the emerge, go to the grocery store and get some tomatoe juice and GO HOME. The people you hear about complaining of "waiting for 4 hours to see a doctor for 5 min", should probably never have gone to the emerge in the first place, people that are really sick/hurt, don't wait 3 hours b/c it's an EMERGENCY.

 

redundant bureaucratic red-tape.........speaks for itself, it's here, it stops people from getting treatment they need. I think it is a sign that the government should stop listening to the bean counters and runnning the country like a business.

[Park Life 70]

Some Americans with Canadian partners go across the border for free healthcare do they not??

[Happy Face 29]

 

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_MnYI3_FRbbQ/SqpU...-h/tomorrow.png

Edited September 11, 2009 by Happy Face

[DanTheMan 0]

You do your masters at Durham Chez?

[Cid_MCDP 0]

In all honesty I don't think the UK NHS has many shortcomings at all. Some of the most expensive treatments with least proven benefit are not available on the NHS, that's about it. Otherwise, everything else is covered. Also, waiting lists are now right down to acceptable levels imo. My Dad, for instance, is in the process of having his second elective knee replacement. He could pick the time to suit him and he won't pay a penny. Of course, there will be some negative anecdotes too, but overall people here appreciate the NHS and are rightly proud of it. And of course, it costs a fraction of what you pay.

 

See, this is the impression I get as well. I was just curious to hear some of your views and experiences on your system. I can tell you the flaws in our system- the biggest one is you have to be working or retired from a job you've worked for years to have insurance because the VAST majority of us don't have our own plans- we're tied into the HMOs through our work. This works out great for companies because you're much less likely to up and quit a job if it means no money and no health insurance. Add in the fact that just about every company has new hires on a 90-day probationary period in which they don't have to provide you insurance and you suddenly become a model corporate employee.

 

Not sure I follow this. You have a president who has recognised the problem and is trying to fix it, and is being called worse than Hitler from a large section of the public for doing so. You live in a democracy, the mechanism for change is there, unfortunately at least 50% of your population are retards.

 

No, the thing I was referring to is the fact that the article that ChezGiven quoted seems to be pointing the finger at the American public for not being outraged at all the inefficiency in the healthcare system, not the system itself.

 

As far as the mechanism for change being there, like I say, the billions of lobby money from the pharmaceutical companies and whatnot tend to throw a spanner in that mechanism. Why in the world lobbying is even legal in this country is beyond me. I can understand the need for it back in the day when you actually had to go to Washington to make your point known- like before the internet or phones or whatever, but it's terrible for all of us "normal Americans" that it's still in existence. Moore touches on it some in Sicko, but especially the way the HMOs came to be in this country is just absolutely corrupt.

 

Lols... again, education spending in this country has decreased nearly every year I've been alive and that's 35 years. You seen Idiocracy? In the future, people are going to thing Mike Judge was a documentary filmmaker.

[Cid_MCDP 0]

 

Thanks Cid.

 

It was a tad zut alors. My overriding assumption is that he was a mentalist, but then I was in some bizarre offshoot of France...

 

Are they still wanting to seccede from Canada? Haven't heard much about that lately. When they were making a big stink over it, the Habs were pitiful. I've always had a theory that Montreal's destiny as a province is largely dependent on how good or bad the Habs are playing at the time.

 

I have no idea what a tad zut alors is.

 

 

Nah, they know they have it pretty good here.

 

Montreal is a city in Quebec.

 

Zut Alors=DAMN!!=BLIMEY!!

 

Personally I think that Health Care (here and the US) needs to stop being run as a business, it's people not clients or numbers. The government is supposed to have the public's best interest at heart. If someone is dying of cancer and there is a treatment for it, they should get it, end of story. Healthcare in Canada is far from perfect, but there are more people excluded from Healthcare in the states than we have citizens ffs.....seems a bit f'ed up.

 

Geez- nothing like a typo to make me look like the typical ignorant American.

 

I swear, I meant to type Quebec instead of Montreal that second time! Being a hockey fan, the sucession talk was kind of a big deal there a few years ago when Quebec was talking about bonking out of Canada. Don't know why- it isn't like they'd suddenly be kicked out (Montreal was one of the "Original Six" hockey teams in the NHL- being in Canda, I'm sure you already know this; just mentioning it for the cheap seats) of the league.

 

Totally agree with your sentiments on us and healthcare though- it's ridiculous that we have a political party that is all about Right To Life but won't get on board for un-corporatizing healthcare. Course, these are the same people that are also pro-death penalty, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

 

(BTW- the other one is no better- pro-welfare but no healthcare? Uh, ok...)

 

Soaring medical inflation depresses Americans’ standard of living and threatens to bust the budget. The system is riddled with waste. Yet most Americans feel little urge to make it more efficient. When asked if insurance firms should be obliged to pay for expensive treatments that have not been proved more effective than a cheaper alternative, 56% say yes.

 

 

I can tell you exactly how that conclusion was arrived at and it is in no way indicitive of how we feel about medical inflation or efficiency- the line of thinking would be something along the lines of, "I pay for insurance, they should pay for my care." Since most Americans don't "directly" pay for their healthcare, they have no interest in making the process more efficient.

 

That aside, we really don't have any say in the matter one way or another. This country's government is firmly in the pocket of corporations and their lobbies. Even if we did all suddenly wake up one day and demand the process become more efficient, it'd never happen. Saying we feel little urge to make things more efficient is akin to saying the American people feel no urge to make NASA more efficient because of the Challenger or Columbia disasters, or that we feel no urge to make the FBI and CIA more efficient because of 9/11. We have no say in something like that. We should be on the hook for a lot of things, but apathy towards medical inflation shouldn't be one of them.

 

 

.........hahaha, no worries i thought about editing my post b/c your posts on here don't fit the american stereotype

 

 

Lols, no, no. That's my bad. I have this bad habit of writing some stuff, adding my reply, then upon re-reading it, think of some better or less convoluted way to explain myself, edit the post, then pop back out. Sometimes my re-writes become re-wrongs.

 

Hey, so all this being said...

 

There's all kinds of stories in our press about the Canadian and UK systems ultimately being worse than ours- long waits for emergency care, expensive or extremely technical procedures not being "approved" (or whatever), stuff like that.

 

I know first hand that our media can seldom if ever be believed when it comes to stuff like this, but for the sake of my own perspective on these things, what would you, any of you, describe as being the shortcomings of your (respective) nationalized healthcare systems? I'm pretty well aware of the problems with ours, just wondering if the alternative really is worse.

 

 

There are problems with Canadian Healthcare for sure, lack of MD's in rural areas, long emergency waits and redundant bureaucratic red-tape being the big ones.

 

Lack of MD's......... not too bad if you live in a major center (lower mainland BC, Calgary, MONTREAL haha, Toronto etc.) but if you happen not to live close to a major center you could be looking at as much as a day's drive or in some cases a plane ride to get to the treatment or MD that can help you. Inconvenient yes, but when you arrive you get treatment , end of story.

 

Long emergency waits............My Mom was a Triage/Emergency Room nurse for 35 years, biggest issue with wait times is people that don't need to be there clogging up the system. If your kid has a rash on his/her ass........that is not a reason to be in the emerge, go see your doctor, if you don't have a doctor go to a clinic. If your kid (and this really happened) HAS BEEN SPRAYED BY A SKUNK!!!........that is not a reason to be in the emerge, go to the grocery store and get some tomatoe juice and GO HOME. The people you hear about complaining of "waiting for 4 hours to see a doctor for 5 min", should probably never have gone to the emerge in the first place, people that are really sick/hurt, don't wait 3 hours b/c it's an EMERGENCY.

 

redundant bureaucratic red-tape.........speaks for itself, it's here, it stops people from getting treatment they need. I think it is a sign that the government should stop listening to the bean counters and runnning the country like a business.

 

So as long as you live in an NHL city, you're pretty much ok then?

 

That's really not so much different than here. My hometown is a little bitty town in southern Illinois with about 6500 people. There's a hospital, but it serves largely as helipad for the bigger hospitals to lifeflight people out to their own facilities. You're cool if you've got like a broken arm or something, but if you've been in a car accident and have some real trauma, they won't even bother trying to fix you- they'll do what they can to patch you up and then stick you on the helicopter.

 

Ditto on wait times here. Lots of folks in the ER in the evenings for colds because their regular doctor's office is closed. I'd blame the patients entirely, but our media is so fear-based here, you can almost understand their hysteria.

 

HMOs have their own brand of red tape- even if a patient sees a doctor multiple times for the same issue, you won't see a specialist unless that original doc approves.

 

Funny you mention that about goverment running things like a business- at the state college I used to teach at, I made that very same statement in regard to an equipment budget of mine that got cut as a cost-saving measure...

[Fop 1]

Just wait to the add-ons and further work they'll try to get out of it. The amount of money wasted by government bodies on consultants is shocking.

 

 

It's not waste , even if it's £25,000 for a feasibility study in the feasibility of a feasibility study. That's Chezyism

[ChezGiven 0]

Just wait to the add-ons and further work they'll try to get out of it. The amount of money wasted by government bodies on consultants is shocking.

 

 

It's not waste , even if it's £25,000 for a feasibility study in the feasibility of a feasibility study. That's Chezyism

 

Chezonomics mate, you cant argue with it.

[Fop 1]

Just wait to the add-ons and further work they'll try to get out of it. The amount of money wasted by government bodies on consultants is shocking.

 

 

It's not waste , even if it's £25,000 for a feasibility study in the feasibility of a feasibility study. That's Chezyism

 

Chezonomics mate, you cant argue with it.

 

You can, but it will cost you.

[Happy Face 29]

Who are the undeserving "others" benefiting from expanded government actions?

Monday Sept. 14, 2009 09:15 EDT

 

The New York Times' Ross Douthat argues, uncontroversially, that the tea-party protests, townhall outbursts and related appendages aren't about specific health care proposals but, instead, are motivated by a more generalized anger over what is happening in Washington:

 

At the same time, [the health care protests have] become the vessel for a year’s worth of anxieties about bailouts, deficits and Beltway incompetence.

 

This August’s town-hall fury wasn’t just about the details of health care. Neither were the anti-Obama protests that crowded Washington over the weekend. They were about the Wall Street bailout, the G.M. takeover, the A.I.G. bonuses, and countless smaller examples of middle-income Americans’ "playing by the rules," as [GOP pollster Frank] Luntz puts it, "and having someone else benefit."

 

Notably, Douthat never specifies the identity of this so-called "someone else" who, as a result of government behavior, is unfairly benefiting from the hard work of middle-class Americans, but he gives a clue when he compares current anger over the health care bill to the anger over the 1994 crime bill, which he argues drove Democrats out of, and Newt Gingrich into, Beltway power:

 

Instead, the crime bill became a lightning rod for populist outrage. The price tag made it seem fiscally irresponsible. (Back then, $30 billion was real money.) The billions it lavished on crime prevention -- like the infamous funding of "midnight basketball" -- looked liked ineffective welfare spending. The gun-control provisions felt like liberalism-as-usual.

 

"Every day that the Republicans delayed the bill," Luntz remembers, "the public learned more about it -- and the more they learned, the angrier they got."

 

In other words, the 1994 fury over the crime bill was driven by the belief that the Clinton-led federal government would steal money from middle-class Americans and give it to "midnight basketball" programs, i.e., "welfare" recipients. The racial and class-war components of that fear-mongering campaign were manifest: Bill Clinton wanted to steal the money of "'middle-income Americans playing by the rules" and transfer it to the inner-city (see Ta-Nehisi Coates' examination of the racial, class and similar cultural appeals that fueled vitriolic right-wing attacks on Clinton).

 

In that sense, Douthat (and Luntz) are correct when they say: "That’s exactly what’s been happening now." Just as was true for the 1994 crime bill, the right-wing fury over health care reform is motivated by the fear that middle-class Americans will have their money taken away by Obama while -- all together now, euphemistically -- "having someone else benefit." And this "someone else" are, as always, the poor minorities and other undeserving deadbeats who, in right-wing lore, somehow (despite their sorry state) exert immensely powerful influence over the U.S. Government and are thus the beneficiaries of endless, undeserved largesse: people too lazy to work, illegal immigrants, those living below the poverty line. That's why Joe Wilson's outburst resonated so forcefully among the Right and why he became an immediate folk hero: he was voicing the core right-wing fear that their money was being stolen from them by Obama in order to lavish the Undeserving and the Others -- in this case illegal immigrants -- with ill-gotten gains ("having someone else benefit," as Douthat/Luntz put it).

 

* * * * *

 

This is the paradox of the tea-party movement and other right-wing protests fueled by genuine citizen anger and fear. It is true that the federal government embraces redistributive policies and that middle-class income is seized in order that "someone else benefits." But so obviously, that "someone else" who is benefiting is not the poor and lower classes -- who continue to get poorer as the numbers living below the poverty line expand and the rich-poor gap grows in the U.S. to unprecedented proportions. The "someone else" that is benefiting from Washington policies are -- as usual -- the super-rich, the tiny number of huge corporations which literally own and control the Government. The premise of these citizen protests is not wrong: Washington politicians are in thrall to special interests and are, in essence, corruptly stealing the country's economic security in order to provide increasing benefits to a small and undeserving minority. But the "minority" here isn't what Fox News means by that term, but is the tiny sliver of corporate power which literally writes our laws and, in every case, ends up benefiting.

 

It wasn't the poor or illegal immigrants who were the beneficiaries of the Wall St. bailout; it was the investment banks which, not even a year later, are wallowing in record profits and bonuses thanks to massive taxpayer-funded welfare. The endlessly expanding (and secret) balance sheet of the Federal Reserve isn't going to fund midnight basketball programs or health care for Mexican immigrants but is enabling extreme profiteering by the very people who, just a year ago, almost brought the global economic system to full-scale collapse. Our endless wars and always-expanding Surveillance State -- fueled by constant fear-mongering campaigns against the Latest Scary Enemy -- keep the National Security corporations drowning in profits, paid for by middle-class taxes. And even health-care reform -- which supposedly began with anger over extreme insurance company profiteering at the expense of people's health -- will be an enormous boon to that same industry, as tens of millions of people are forced by the Government to become their customers with the central mechanism to control costs (the public option) blocked by that same industry. That's why those industries are enthusiastically in favor of reform: because, as always, they will benefit massively from it.

 

This is what is so strange and remarkable about these tea-party protests. The people who win when government acts aren't the poor, minorities or illegal immigrants -- the prime targets of these protesters' resentment. Their plight only worsens by the day. In Washington, members of those groups are even more powerless than "middle-income Americans." That's so obvious. The people who win whenever the federal government expands its power are the ones who, through their massive resources and lobbyists armies, control what the government does: the richest and most powerful corporations. And yet -- in an extreme paradox -- those are the people who are venerated by the Right: they simultaneously spew rage at what's happening in Washington while revering and defending the interests of the oligarchs who are most responsible.

 

What's really happening with these protests is that the genuine rage and not unreasonable economic insecurity of these citizens is being stoked, exploited, distorted and manipulated by movement leaders for entirely different ends. The people who are leading them -- Rush Limbaugh, the Murdoch-owned Fox News, Glenn Beck, business-dominated organizations of the type led by Dick Armey -- are cultural warriors above everything else. They're all in a far different socioeconomic position than the "middle-income Americans" whose anger they're ostensibly representing. Their principal preoccupation is their cultural contempt for various groups (illegal immigrants, the "undeserving" poor, liberals) and their desire to preserve the status quo whereby the prime beneficiaries of government policies remain themselves: the super rich and the interests that control Washington. It's certainly true that many of these protesters are driven by the standard right-wing cultural issues which have long shaped that movement -- social issues, religious fears, cultural and racial divisions, and hatred for "liberals" as Communist-Muslim-Terrorist-lovers. For many, all of that is intensified by the humiliation of being completely thrown out of power, at the hands of the first black President. But much of it is fueled by the pillaging of the corporations and Wall St. interests which own their government.

 

That's what accounts for the gaping paradox of these protests movements: genuine anger (over the core corruption of Washington and the eroding economic security for virtually everyone other than a tiny minority) is being bizarrely directed at those who never benefit (the poorest and most downtrodden), while those who are most responsible (the wealthiest and largest corporations) are depicted as the victims who need defending (they want to seize Wall St. bonuses and soak the rich!!). Several months ago, Matt Taibbi perfectly described the bizarre contradiction driving these protests:

 

After all, the reason the winger crowd can’t find a way to be coherently angry right now is because this country has no healthy avenues for genuine populist outrage. It never has. The setup always goes the other way: when the excesses of business interests and their political proteges in Washington leave the regular guy broke and screwed, the response is always for the lower and middle classes to split down the middle and find reasons to get pissed off not at their greedy bosses but at each other. That’s why even people like [Glenn] Beck’s audience, who I’d wager are mostly lower-income people, can’t imagine themselves protesting against the Wall Street barons who in actuality are the ones who fucked them over. . . .

 

Actual rich people can’t ever be the target. It’s a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master’s carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea or the Jews in the Pale or whoever after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields. You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. Whatever the master does, you’re on board. When you get frisky, he sticks a big cross in the middle of your village, and you spend the rest of your life praying to it with big googly eyes. Or he puts out newspapers full of innuendo about this or that faraway group and you immediately salute and rush off to join the hate squad. A good peasant is loyal, simpleminded, and full of misdirected anger. And that’s what we’ve got now, a lot of misdirected anger searching around for a non-target to mis-punish . . . can’t be mad at AIG, can’t be mad at Citi or Goldman Sachs. The real villains have to be the anti-AIG protesters! After all, those people earned those bonuses! If ever there was a textbook case of peasant thinking, it’s struggling middle-class Americans burned up in defense of taxpayer-funded bonuses to millionaires. It’s really weird stuff.

 

A significant reason this has happened is that the Democratic Party has largely ridden to power based on its servitude to these corporate interests -- chief party-fundraiser Chuck Schumer is the Senator from Wall St. and the Blue Dogs are little more than corporate-owned subsidiaries -- and thus can't possibly pretend to be opponents of the status quo. They can't and don't want to tap into any populist anger because they're every bit as supportive of, servants to, the corporate agenda as the GOP establishment is. K Street support is what sustains their power. Super-rich corporations aren't benefiting from a free market, laissez faire approach. They're benefiting from the opposite: a constant merging of government and corporate power whereby the latter exploits the former for its own benefit. The right-wing theme that an expansion of federal government power means a contraction in corporate freedom is completely obsolete: government power is the means by which large corporations benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else.

 

Both parties -- but particularly the one in power at any given moment -- perpetuate that system because they benefit from it. That's what has left the gaping void into which Fox News, Glenn Beck, Limbaugh and the like have stepped: absurdly parading around as populist leaders while supporting policies designed to further crush the interests of the people who they are leading.

 

* * * * *

 

In a rational world, there ought to be citizen rage towards the government that transcends -- indeed, that has little to do with -- divisions between the so-called "Right" and "Left." One saw the incipient emergence of that sort of citizen anger during the rage over the Wall St. bailouts and AIG bonuses, where the divisions were defined not as "conservatives v. liberals" but as "outsiders" (citizens of all ideologies who were enraged by such blatant corruption and stealing) v. "insiders" (who defended it all as necessary and scorned the irresponsible dirty masses who were protesting). The real power dynamic in this country has little to do with the cable-generated "right v. left" drama and much more to do with "outsider/insider" divisions, since the same corporate interests control the Government regardless of which political party wins.

 

But these protests end up expressing themselves in dichotomies that are largely besides the point -- "right v. left" or "Democratic v. GOP" -- because that's how their leaders define it. These protests, at their leadership level, are little more than Fox-News-generated events. That is notable in itself: it's extremely unusual (if not unprecedented) for a political movement in the U.S. to be led and galvanized by a "news" media outlet; that's usually something that happens elsewhere ("opposition television or radio stations" sponsoring street protests in Italy, Venezuela, Rwanda). Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are part of the class that has long controlled and benefited from Washington, and thus promote a view of the world based in the Douthat/Luntz "having someone else benefit": the Democrats are socialists coming to steal your money and give it to the poor, the minorities and the immigrants. As a result, citizen rage is directed towards everyone except those who are actually responsible for their plight.

 

If Fox News, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh were truly opposed to expanded government power, where were they when George Bush and Dick Cheney were expanding federal power in virtually every realm, driving up the national debt to unprecedented proportions, destroying middle-class economic security in order to benefit the wealthiest, and generally ensuring government intrusion into every aspect of people's lives? They were supporting it and cheering it on. That's what gives the lie to their pretense of "small-government" rhetoric. These citizen protests have a core of truth and validity to them -- it would be bizarre if citizens weren't enraged by what is taking place -- but that is all being misdirected and exploited for ends that have nothing to do with the interests (or even their claimed beliefs) of the protesters themselves.

 

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...ment/index.html

 

Should be mailed to every US citizen.

Edited September 16, 2009 by Happy Face

[The Fish 9062]

To be honest, you've all made interestnig points, but now that Russell Brand says National Health Care in America is a good thing, I'm convinced

[Cid_MCDP 0]

Who are the undeserving "others" benefiting from expanded government actions?

Monday Sept. 14, 2009 09:15 EDT

 

The New York Times' Ross Douthat argues, uncontroversially, that the tea-party protests, townhall outbursts and related appendages aren't about specific health care proposals but, instead, are motivated by a more generalized anger over what is happening in Washington:

 

At the same time, [the health care protests have] become the vessel for a year’s worth of anxieties about bailouts, deficits and Beltway incompetence.

 

This August’s town-hall fury wasn’t just about the details of health care. Neither were the anti-Obama protests that crowded Washington over the weekend. They were about the Wall Street bailout, the G.M. takeover, the A.I.G. bonuses, and countless smaller examples of middle-income Americans’ "playing by the rules," as [GOP pollster Frank] Luntz puts it, "and having someone else benefit."

 

Notably, Douthat never specifies the identity of this so-called "someone else" who, as a result of government behavior, is unfairly benefiting from the hard work of middle-class Americans, but he gives a clue when he compares current anger over the health care bill to the anger over the 1994 crime bill, which he argues drove Democrats out of, and Newt Gingrich into, Beltway power:

 

Instead, the crime bill became a lightning rod for populist outrage. The price tag made it seem fiscally irresponsible. (Back then, $30 billion was real money.) The billions it lavished on crime prevention -- like the infamous funding of "midnight basketball" -- looked liked ineffective welfare spending. The gun-control provisions felt like liberalism-as-usual.

 

"Every day that the Republicans delayed the bill," Luntz remembers, "the public learned more about it -- and the more they learned, the angrier they got."

 

In other words, the 1994 fury over the crime bill was driven by the belief that the Clinton-led federal government would steal money from middle-class Americans and give it to "midnight basketball" programs, i.e., "welfare" recipients. The racial and class-war components of that fear-mongering campaign were manifest: Bill Clinton wanted to steal the money of "'middle-income Americans playing by the rules" and transfer it to the inner-city (see Ta-Nehisi Coates' examination of the racial, class and similar cultural appeals that fueled vitriolic right-wing attacks on Clinton).

 

In that sense, Douthat (and Luntz) are correct when they say: "That’s exactly what’s been happening now." Just as was true for the 1994 crime bill, the right-wing fury over health care reform is motivated by the fear that middle-class Americans will have their money taken away by Obama while -- all together now, euphemistically -- "having someone else benefit." And this "someone else" are, as always, the poor minorities and other undeserving deadbeats who, in right-wing lore, somehow (despite their sorry state) exert immensely powerful influence over the U.S. Government and are thus the beneficiaries of endless, undeserved largesse: people too lazy to work, illegal immigrants, those living below the poverty line. That's why Joe Wilson's outburst resonated so forcefully among the Right and why he became an immediate folk hero: he was voicing the core right-wing fear that their money was being stolen from them by Obama in order to lavish the Undeserving and the Others -- in this case illegal immigrants -- with ill-gotten gains ("having someone else benefit," as Douthat/Luntz put it).

 

* * * * *

 

This is the paradox of the tea-party movement and other right-wing protests fueled by genuine citizen anger and fear. It is true that the federal government embraces redistributive policies and that middle-class income is seized in order that "someone else benefits." But so obviously, that "someone else" who is benefiting is not the poor and lower classes -- who continue to get poorer as the numbers living below the poverty line expand and the rich-poor gap grows in the U.S. to unprecedented proportions. The "someone else" that is benefiting from Washington policies are -- as usual -- the super-rich, the tiny number of huge corporations which literally own and control the Government. The premise of these citizen protests is not wrong: Washington politicians are in thrall to special interests and are, in essence, corruptly stealing the country's economic security in order to provide increasing benefits to a small and undeserving minority. But the "minority" here isn't what Fox News means by that term, but is the tiny sliver of corporate power which literally writes our laws and, in every case, ends up benefiting.

 

It wasn't the poor or illegal immigrants who were the beneficiaries of the Wall St. bailout; it was the investment banks which, not even a year later, are wallowing in record profits and bonuses thanks to massive taxpayer-funded welfare. The endlessly expanding (and secret) balance sheet of the Federal Reserve isn't going to fund midnight basketball programs or health care for Mexican immigrants but is enabling extreme profiteering by the very people who, just a year ago, almost brought the global economic system to full-scale collapse. Our endless wars and always-expanding Surveillance State -- fueled by constant fear-mongering campaigns against the Latest Scary Enemy -- keep the National Security corporations drowning in profits, paid for by middle-class taxes. And even health-care reform -- which supposedly began with anger over extreme insurance company profiteering at the expense of people's health -- will be an enormous boon to that same industry, as tens of millions of people are forced by the Government to become their customers with the central mechanism to control costs (the public option) blocked by that same industry. That's why those industries are enthusiastically in favor of reform: because, as always, they will benefit massively from it.

 

This is what is so strange and remarkable about these tea-party protests. The people who win when government acts aren't the poor, minorities or illegal immigrants -- the prime targets of these protesters' resentment. Their plight only worsens by the day. In Washington, members of those groups are even more powerless than "middle-income Americans." That's so obvious. The people who win whenever the federal government expands its power are the ones who, through their massive resources and lobbyists armies, control what the government does: the richest and most powerful corporations. And yet -- in an extreme paradox -- those are the people who are venerated by the Right: they simultaneously spew rage at what's happening in Washington while revering and defending the interests of the oligarchs who are most responsible.

 

What's really happening with these protests is that the genuine rage and not unreasonable economic insecurity of these citizens is being stoked, exploited, distorted and manipulated by movement leaders for entirely different ends. The people who are leading them -- Rush Limbaugh, the Murdoch-owned Fox News, Glenn Beck, business-dominated organizations of the type led by Dick Armey -- are cultural warriors above everything else. They're all in a far different socioeconomic position than the "middle-income Americans" whose anger they're ostensibly representing. Their principal preoccupation is their cultural contempt for various groups (illegal immigrants, the "undeserving" poor, liberals) and their desire to preserve the status quo whereby the prime beneficiaries of government policies remain themselves: the super rich and the interests that control Washington. It's certainly true that many of these protesters are driven by the standard right-wing cultural issues which have long shaped that movement -- social issues, religious fears, cultural and racial divisions, and hatred for "liberals" as Communist-Muslim-Terrorist-lovers. For many, all of that is intensified by the humiliation of being completely thrown out of power, at the hands of the first black President. But much of it is fueled by the pillaging of the corporations and Wall St. interests which own their government.

 

That's what accounts for the gaping paradox of these protests movements: genuine anger (over the core corruption of Washington and the eroding economic security for virtually everyone other than a tiny minority) is being bizarrely directed at those who never benefit (the poorest and most downtrodden), while those who are most responsible (the wealthiest and largest corporations) are depicted as the victims who need defending (they want to seize Wall St. bonuses and soak the rich!!). Several months ago, Matt Taibbi perfectly described the bizarre contradiction driving these protests:

 

After all, the reason the winger crowd can’t find a way to be coherently angry right now is because this country has no healthy avenues for genuine populist outrage. It never has. The setup always goes the other way: when the excesses of business interests and their political proteges in Washington leave the regular guy broke and screwed, the response is always for the lower and middle classes to split down the middle and find reasons to get pissed off not at their greedy bosses but at each other. That’s why even people like [Glenn] Beck’s audience, who I’d wager are mostly lower-income people, can’t imagine themselves protesting against the Wall Street barons who in actuality are the ones who fucked them over. . . .

 

Actual rich people can’t ever be the target. It’s a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master’s carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea or the Jews in the Pale or whoever after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields. You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. Whatever the master does, you’re on board. When you get frisky, he sticks a big cross in the middle of your village, and you spend the rest of your life praying to it with big googly eyes. Or he puts out newspapers full of innuendo about this or that faraway group and you immediately salute and rush off to join the hate squad. A good peasant is loyal, simpleminded, and full of misdirected anger. And that’s what we’ve got now, a lot of misdirected anger searching around for a non-target to mis-punish . . . can’t be mad at AIG, can’t be mad at Citi or Goldman Sachs. The real villains have to be the anti-AIG protesters! After all, those people earned those bonuses! If ever there was a textbook case of peasant thinking, it’s struggling middle-class Americans burned up in defense of taxpayer-funded bonuses to millionaires. It’s really weird stuff.

 

A significant reason this has happened is that the Democratic Party has largely ridden to power based on its servitude to these corporate interests -- chief party-fundraiser Chuck Schumer is the Senator from Wall St. and the Blue Dogs are little more than corporate-owned subsidiaries -- and thus can't possibly pretend to be opponents of the status quo. They can't and don't want to tap into any populist anger because they're every bit as supportive of, servants to, the corporate agenda as the GOP establishment is. K Street support is what sustains their power. Super-rich corporations aren't benefiting from a free market, laissez faire approach. They're benefiting from the opposite: a constant merging of government and corporate power whereby the latter exploits the former for its own benefit. The right-wing theme that an expansion of federal government power means a contraction in corporate freedom is completely obsolete: government power is the means by which large corporations benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else.

 

Both parties -- but particularly the one in power at any given moment -- perpetuate that system because they benefit from it. That's what has left the gaping void into which Fox News, Glenn Beck, Limbaugh and the like have stepped: absurdly parading around as populist leaders while supporting policies designed to further crush the interests of the people who they are leading.

 

* * * * *

 

In a rational world, there ought to be citizen rage towards the government that transcends -- indeed, that has little to do with -- divisions between the so-called "Right" and "Left." One saw the incipient emergence of that sort of citizen anger during the rage over the Wall St. bailouts and AIG bonuses, where the divisions were defined not as "conservatives v. liberals" but as "outsiders" (citizens of all ideologies who were enraged by such blatant corruption and stealing) v. "insiders" (who defended it all as necessary and scorned the irresponsible dirty masses who were protesting). The real power dynamic in this country has little to do with the cable-generated "right v. left" drama and much more to do with "outsider/insider" divisions, since the same corporate interests control the Government regardless of which political party wins.

 

But these protests end up expressing themselves in dichotomies that are largely besides the point -- "right v. left" or "Democratic v. GOP" -- because that's how their leaders define it. These protests, at their leadership level, are little more than Fox-News-generated events. That is notable in itself: it's extremely unusual (if not unprecedented) for a political movement in the U.S. to be led and galvanized by a "news" media outlet; that's usually something that happens elsewhere ("opposition television or radio stations" sponsoring street protests in Italy, Venezuela, Rwanda). Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are part of the class that has long controlled and benefited from Washington, and thus promote a view of the world based in the Douthat/Luntz "having someone else benefit": the Democrats are socialists coming to steal your money and give it to the poor, the minorities and the immigrants. As a result, citizen rage is directed towards everyone except those who are actually responsible for their plight.

 

If Fox News, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh were truly opposed to expanded government power, where were they when George Bush and Dick Cheney were expanding federal power in virtually every realm, driving up the national debt to unprecedented proportions, destroying middle-class economic security in order to benefit the wealthiest, and generally ensuring government intrusion into every aspect of people's lives? They were supporting it and cheering it on. That's what gives the lie to their pretense of "small-government" rhetoric. These citizen protests have a core of truth and validity to them -- it would be bizarre if citizens weren't enraged by what is taking place -- but that is all being misdirected and exploited for ends that have nothing to do with the interests (or even their claimed beliefs) of the protesters themselves.

 

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...ment/index.html

 

Should be mailed to every US citizen.

 

What I've been saying for years.

 

You know honestly why so many people in this country stick up for the rich and the corporations?

 

Because a lot of them are dumb enough to think that one day they'll be rich. I swear to God. I've seen it, I've talked to them. Even the people who have no shot at even getting to upper middle class let alone rich, they all buy into the American Dream hook-line-and-sinker and don't want to make the mistake of over-taxing the rich and end up screwing themselves. It's fucking amazing hearing a line worker who tops out at $13.50 an hour explain to you why the rich bear the financial burdens of this country.

 

(Related sidenote- this is also why politicians make such big deals out of decisive issue that would normally be of no consequence to 99% of the American people. I see people here in southern Indiana roughly 1300 miles from the nearest Mexican border obsessed with the topic of Illegal immigration or people who have never knowingly met a gay person that's consumed with gay marriage. How do either of those things actually affect anyone around here? They don't. Why do the politicians want you all freaked out over them? Because if you're pissed off at all the gay liberal Mexicans that are stealing our jobs and free healthcare, you probably won't realize that the rich people are the ones who have destroyed/ are destroying this country and you should be pissed off at them.

 

All these tea party groups... where were you fuckers when they pushed through the bailouts? I remember that shit- on Monday the bankruptcies started. On Tuesday, all the corporate stooges, I mean elected officials, lined up in front of the TV cameras and begged and pleaded for us to let them give the banks unprecedented amounts of cash.

 

We said, "No."

 

On Wednesday they asked again.

 

We said, "No", again.

 

On Thursday, they gave them the money anyway. We shrugged our shoulders, muttered "Fuck" under our breaths and went to work. Well, those of us who still had jobs, of course.

 

I still think these "unprecedented economic times" were caused by American corporations seeking to punish us for trending towards an Obama win. It just felt an awful lot like 1992/ 93 all over again...

Edited September 16, 2009 by Cid_MCDP

[Cid_MCDP 0]

 

Thanks Cid.

 

It was a tad zut alors. My overriding assumption is that he was a mentalist, but then I was in some bizarre offshoot of France...

 

Are they still wanting to seccede from Canada? Haven't heard much about that lately. When they were making a big stink over it, the Habs were pitiful. I've always had a theory that Montreal's destiny as a province is largely dependent on how good or bad the Habs are playing at the time.

 

I have no idea what a tad zut alors is.

 

 

Nah, they know they have it pretty good here.

 

Montreal is a city in Quebec.

 

Zut Alors=DAMN!!=BLIMEY!!

 

Personally I think that Health Care (here and the US) needs to stop being run as a business, it's people not clients or numbers. The government is supposed to have the public's best interest at heart. If someone is dying of cancer and there is a treatment for it, they should get it, end of story. Healthcare in Canada is far from perfect, but there are more people excluded from Healthcare in the states than we have citizens ffs.....seems a bit f'ed up.

 

 

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/HA_HA_HA%2C_OH_WOW

Edited September 21, 2009 by Cid_MCDP

[AgentAxeman 82]

Happy Birthday, Mr President - here's a bloody nose! Republican victory delivers devastating blow on Obama's first anniversary

 

 

Barack Obama has been dealt a shock defeat on the anniversary of his inauguration after an unknown Republican won the US Senate seat long held by Democrat Ted Kennedy.

 

The result is a massive blow to Obama, whose healthcare reform programme is now in doubt.

 

Scott Brown took the Massachusetts seat in the by-election forced by Mr Kennedy's death in August of brain cancer.

 

For weeks, Mr Brown had been the underdog as he faced off against Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley in the race for the US Senate.

Victory: Massachusetts State Senator Scott Brown celebrates his win in the special election

 

But last night Mr Brown, who portrays himself as 'an ordinary, pick-up truck driving guy', took his place after Ms Coakley conceded.

 

Addressing an exuberant victory celebration he declared he was 'ready to go to Washington without delay' as the crowd chanted, 'Seat him now'.

 

And Mr Brown's victory in the by-election, or special election, as it is known in America, could stop President Obama passing healthcare reform just one year after his inauguration.

 

The vote could not have come at a worse time for Mr Obama.

 

He made the reforming of America's privatised healthcare system the focal point of his domestic agenda over the summer - to the fury of many conservative Americans who were set against the idea of nationalised healthcare.

Scott Brown

 

It seemed like a good idea at the time: Mr Brown poses nude for Cosmopolitan to help pay his way through a law degree

 

Mr Obama has largely abandoned any plans for an NHS-style healthcare system in America, but is still pushing ahead with attempts to reform the system.

 

However Mr Brown's win robbed Democrats of the crucial 60th Senate vote they need to pass the healthcare bill and sent shudders of fear through Democrats facing tough races in November's congressional elections.

 

Mr Brown said he would be the pivotal 41st Republican vote against the healthcare overhaul in the 100-member Senate.

 

'People don't want this trillion-dollar healthcare plan that is being forced on the American people,' Brown told cheering supporters at a Boston hotel who chanted '41' and 'Seat him now'.

 

He said voters rejected the closed-door deals that were driving the healthcare debate, and he took satisfaction in proving the experts - and Democrats - wrong.

 

The result and the effect it will have on healthcare is particularly poignant as Democrat Mr Kennedy, who held the seat for almost 47 years, had championed healthcare reforms.

 

'They thought that they owned this seat. They thought that they couldn't lose,' Brown said. 'You all set them straight.'

 

Mr Obama has congratulated Mr Brown on his victory this morning - and said he is looking forward to working with the new Republican senator 'on economic challenges', a White House spokesman said.

 

Democratic leaders vowed to push healthcare reform through Congress despite the results, but several Democrats cautioned the party to reconsider its stance.

 

'It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to take a step back and say we're going to pivot to do a jobs thing,' Representative Anthony Weiner of New York told reporters.

 

Republicans said the results confirmed the public's distaste for the healthcare overhaul and their anger at being ignored by Democratic lawmakers.

 

'The voters in Massachusetts, like Americans everywhere, have made it abundantly clear where they stand on healthcare. They don't want this bill and want Washington to listen to them,' Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said.

 

As voters went to the polls Politico had Mr Brown nine points ahead of Ms Coakley in what was considered a Democratic stronghold.

 

Mr Brown led by 52 per cent to 47 per cent with all but three per cent of precincts counted.

 

Massachusetts last elected a Republican to the Senate in 1972.

 

Ms Coakley had been criticised for running a boring campaign and not fighting hard enough for the seat.

 

In a bid to revive her campaign, Mr Obama and even former president Bill Clinton were drafted in on the trail.

 

'If you were fired up in the last election, I need you more fired up in this election,' the President urged a crowd at a campaign rally on Sunday.

 

Ms Coakley's supporters claim her lead dropped significantly after the Christmas Day attempted airliner bombing that Mr Obama himself said showed a failure of his administration.

 

Jeffrey Berry, professor of political science at Tufts university, said: 'This is catastrophic for the president. The next year is going to be one of gridlock in Congress... There is nothing in bipartisanship for Republicans but virtue. They profit if Obama fails.'

 

'What Massachusetts is reflecting is that there are a lot of people out there, nationwide, that are hurting. The electorate is frustrated, and they want something different.'

 

David Schaefer, professor of political science, at Holy Cross College, said: 'It's a referendum on the Democratic-controlled Congress and specifically disdain with the healthcare reform plan ... The Tea Party movement was unexpectedly big here, and congressmen who came home for their holiday breaks heard a lot of opposition to healthcare reform.

 

'Coakley's campaign was terrible ... she showed an actual disdain for the people.'

 

One example was her failure to appear at a well attended outdoor January 1 professional hockey game at Boston's Fenway Park stadium, while her rival Mr Brown aggressively campaigned outside, Schaefer said.

 

Mr Brown, who is in his third term in the state Senate, never imagined a career in politics let alone threatening the entire agenda of the Obama administration.

 

Otherwise he may have thought twice about appearing nude in America's Cosmopolitan magazine in June 1982 to help pay his way through a law degree at Boston College.

 

He became moderately successful lawyer, dealing mainly with property deals, and has spent years in the National Guard.

 

Fresh from his victory in Massachusetts, some pundits in America are touting the idea of Mr Brown making a run for the presidency in 2012 - possibly posing a challenge to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

 

There are several parallels between the two: both enjoyed similarly meteoric rises to fame, with Mrs Palin plucked from obscurity to run as John McCain's vice presidential candidate in the 2008 election.

 

Both have portrayed themselves as politicians of the people, with Mrs Palin characterising herself as a 'hockey mom' and Mr Brown characterising himself as a 'truck-driving dad'.

 

However characterisations were also being drawn last night between Mr Brown and Mr Obama, with the Washington Independent quoting supporters who described him as 'the white Obama'.

 

Mr Brown has also compared himself to President John F Kennedy, brother of the man whose Senate seat he now occupies.

 

Four years ago, the Massachusetts lieutenant governor passed over Mr Brown as a potential running mate in her bid to replace then-Gov. Mitt Romney because she and her staff saw him as a political lightweight.

 

However those who know Brown are not surprised that he has managed to pull off such a huge political upset.

 

'He's a triathlete,' said state Rep. Richard Ross, a fellow Republican from Brown's hometown of Wrentham.

 

He added: 'He's a competitor, and a lot of people underestimated that. He outworks other people.'

 

The 50-year-old Mr Brown seized on Ms Coakley's early complacency in the abbreviated campaign to define himself as a truck-driving everyman, a doting father and the candidate best suited to push back against a Democratic-dominated Senate.

 

While Ms Coakley was largely out of view after she trounced three primary opponents, Mr Brown held daily press events. He also posted the first television ad of the final election stretch, in which he compared himself to Mr Kennedy's revered brother, the late President John F. Kennedy.

 

He made his potentially crucial '41st vote' against Mr Obama's sweeping healthcare reform effort a major rallying cry in his race to victory.

 

Reinvention is a skill Mr Brown has used throughout his career, seizing opportunities where he found them.

 

In college, he traded on his matinee good looks for work as a model, and while still in law school, he posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine.

 

Later he enlisted in the National Guard and launched a political career that took him from the Wrentham Board of Selectmen to the Massachusetts House and Senate.

 

Mr Brown said his dedication to hard work and family grew out of a difficult childhood.

 

'I didn't come from a lot of money,' he said during a debate. 'My parents are divorced a few times. My mom was on welfare for a period of time. I really came from nothing and worked my way up.'

 

On the campaign trail and in debates, Mr Brown drew bright lines between himself and his Democratic opponent - something Democrats believed hurt Ms Coakley.

 

Massachusetts Democratic political consultant Mary Ann Marsh said Mr Brown was able to capitalise on his strengths during the brief sprint to the special election, in part because Ms Coakley and her supporters sat back after she won the Democratic primary.

 

'In a six-week race, he was given the advantage of having the field to himself for the first four weeks,' she said. 'He was able to define himself, define the race and define her, and nobody questioned him.'

 

Mr Brown grew up in Wakefield and attended Tufts University in nearby Medford. He now is both a lieutenant colonel and the National Guard's top defence attorney in New England. Although he's never been deployed, he has been on assignments in Paraguay and Kazakhstan.

 

Mr Brown met his wife, Gail Huff, now a reporter for Boston's WCVB-TV, in 1985 and the couple married a year later. They have two daughters. Ayla, 21, made it to the top 16 performers in 2006 on the TV singing competition 'American Idol.' Her sister, Arianna, is 19.

 

Mr Brown said his ties to his home state run deep.

 

'I was raised here and I'll probably die here,' he said.

 

Mr Brown's voting record has won high grades from business and gun owner groups and Citizens for Limited Taxation, and low marks from the National Organization for Women, the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the AFL-CIO.