You knew I was a snake when you picked me up...

Regarding Obama, I'm in the same camp with this author...

THE LADY AND THE SNAKE
by William Rogers Pitt

I've been thinking a lot lately about the old story of the Lady and the Snake. One day, so the story goes, a lady was walking down the road when she came across an injured snake. The lady picked up the snake, brought it home, and nursed it back to health. Over time, the lady and the snake became the best of friends. One day, the lady was in her garden with the snake, when the snake lunged forward suddenly and bit her in the throat. As the lady lay dying, she looked at the snake and said, "Why did you kill me? I was your friend! I took care of you!" The snake looked at her and said, "Lady, you knew I was a snake when you picked me up."

This is how I'm feeling about the President of the United States these days.

Example: in a recent Washington Post interview, Mr. Obama ran off a long list of accomplishments he had achieved during his first year in office, and cited the (maybe)-soon-to-be-passed health care "reform" legislation as the most significant. When asked about the strong negative reaction coming from the base of the Democratic party over the removal of any form of public option, Mr. Obama said, "I didn't campaign on the public option."

Rilly?

Oh, rilly?

Nah, not rilly. This was the Obama campaign's line on health care and the public option, way back in the campaign day: "My plan builds on and improves our current insurance system, which most Americans continue to rely upon, and creates a new public health plan for those currently without coverage. Under my plan, Americans will be able to choose to maintain their current coverage if they choose to. For those without health insurance I will establish a new public insurance program, and provide subsides to afford care for those who need them."

The good folks over at DailyKos took the time to further rebut the president's fairly astonishing assertion. To wit:

• In the 2008 Obama-Biden health care plan on the campaign's website, candidate Obama promised that "any American will have the opportunity to enroll in new public plan."

• During a speech at the American Medical Association, President Obama told thousands of doctors that one of the plans included in the new health insurance exchanges "needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market." (6/15/09)

• While speaking to the nation during his weekly address, the President said that "any plan" he signs "must include...a public option." (7/17/09)

• During a conference call with progressive bloggers, the President said he continues "to believe that a robust public option would be the best way to go." (7/20/09)

• * Obama told NBC's David Gregory that a public option "should be a part of this," while rebuking claims that the plan was "dead." (9/20/09)

Mr. President, please don't hiss in my ear and tell me you're not a snake. The base you and your chief of staff are so dismissive of could have probably tolerated an admission of failure on your part regarding the death of the public option. We tried, you could have said, but it was a bridge too far. We wanted it, but couldn't get it. You could have mitigated the insult further by saying, oh, maybe one single word about the GOP obstructionists and their Lieberman lackey who went out of their way to blow the whole process up.

But instead, you went after Dr. Howard Dean for criticizing your rank failures, a man who is above reproach on the subject of health care. You went after Dean instead of Lieberman and the GOP, and as an added twist of the knife, you sat there with a Washington Post reporter and lied with your bare face hanging all the way out about never having campaigned on the necessity of the public option.

Now, I am not a radical. Never have been, never pretended to be. Back in 2002, I got painted as a radical by elements on the Right for calling the Bush administration's WMD-in-Iraq claims into question, and for refusing to line up behind George and the Patriotism Police after 9/11. In the intervening years, I've been tagged as a socialist, a communist, and comically, a fascist by those same elements for resisting the disastrous policies of the previous administration.

But I'm no radical. I'm even willing to swallow this mess of a health care bill because it's a starting point, and in several respects, a significant improvement over the current situation. It sells out women with Nelson's abhorrent abortion amendment, and it may not even be constitutional at the end of the day, but the serious problems within the bill can and must be fixed in the future. I'm also a political pragmatist; I very much want to keep the Bushian far-right yahoos out of power next year and in 2012, not out of love for Obama and the Democrats, but out of simple fear. I know what the GOP is today, and I'll swallow any number of jagged little pills to keep all that from happening again.

But I really don't like getting lied to, especially after everything this country has been through, after everything that was done by millions of Americans to clean house and get this ship of state back to some semblance of stability. Obviously, a politician telling a lie is not big news - my personal theory, based on vast personal experience, is that if you've heard of a politician, odds are that person is a creep you wouldn't want to be in the same room with - but Obama's public option canard was exceptionally rank.

I'm no radical. I just believe with all my heart in the idea that is America, an idea that has been poorly served for the entirety of this thankfully dying decade, an idea that has once again been sold down the river by another lying politician. That idea deserves better, as do we all, and if the Obama administration keeps this despicable behavior up, they are going to find themselves squared off with a legion of newly-radicalized people who will wonder why they ever picked this snake up in the first place.