The Big Nothing

President Obama gave, by all accounts, the Big Speech last night, to a joint-session of Congress, to 300 million Americans, to a watching world. It is rumored the Heavens above paused to consider the enormity of the occasion. This Speech was to be a game-changer on National Healthcare that would reverse the President's plummeting polls, and sweep America into the 21st Century and back to greatness.

Jim Geraughty of The Campaign Spot summarizes the promises made by the President (link not available at this time) after 48 minutes:

[The Healthcare bill] will keep everything the same for those who have health insurance through their jobs, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA; mandate coverage of pre-existing conditions; ban caps on coverage; mandate coverage of routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies; offer health insurance to 30 million uninsured; provide tax credits for small businesses; painlessly mandate coverage for the young healthy uninsured; provide hardship waivers; provide choice and competition; keep insurance companies honest; avoid taxpayer subsidies for public option plans; keep out illegal immigrants; not pay for abortions; and not deny care to the elderly because of cost-benefit analyses, all while not adding one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future.

After achieving all of this it is not clear whether the Seventh Day will have arrived and the President and his Party can rest, or they will have another day or so to tackle more mundane matters like World Peace and Poverty.

I am sorry, my fellow Citizens, but it is an invariable rule that a politician's promise of everything is the same as a promise of nothing.

This was no game-changer, just the same old, same old, bribe-the-voter style of politics immortalized in the line "A Chicken in every pot!" The Speech was a whole lot of Nothing masquerading as Something.

I can't imagine the American people will buy this kind of clap-trap anymore. National Healthcare, RIP.