I have to ask the question...when have the American people ever "respected the office" of the president? Are you kidding? Without parody of the president we probably wouldn't have half our political discourse .

I'm exaggerating, of course, but Clinton and Bush were both constantly challenged and even ridiculed for their opinions. Why does Obama gain immunity to the same? What's so special about him? If anything he isn't getting enough heat in my opinion. We wouldn't want a soft president, now would we? Oh, wait...this is Obama! (See what I did there? )

According to the news only 32 million Americans watched the speech on television. That's a little over 10%. My theory is that people are getting bored of watching Obama very eloquently say nothing at all. As opposed to our previous president who said things very strongly very badly . Based on the numbers of people who watch the news daily there are considerably more Americans who know about Wilson's outburst than actually watched any of it happen.

Then again, I can't really blame them. With Obama it's often much easier to skip the speech and get the Cliff Notes version from your favorite news station afterwords and save yourself the trouble of sifting through the feel-good speech yourself.

For the conservatives this is Fox News, who would tell you Obama was distorting the truth if he said "Two plus two equals four...because it can!" and for liberals this is CNN/etc. who won't tell you anything he said and just tell you that it was, once again, "very well-spoken and inspirational." They will probably also throw in a couple of not-so-subtle comments about the lack of "team playing" by the Republicans when all Obama wants to do is "move past partisan politics" (which is a fancy, alliterate way of saying everyone share his point of view).

And then you can talk to people like me who literally fell asleep about ten minutes into the speech. I'm not proud of that. But it's the truth. His voice is just so, well, soothing. And since it still wasn't saying anything to actually engage my mind I unfortunately fell asleep long before he said anything of substance.

I actually did want to find out the details of the health care plan, as I have no idea what it really is, but since I fell asleep I didn't hear it. Based on synopses I've heard from various senators who were there after the fact it sounds like I didn't miss much. They don't know what it is, either. Even the democrats are saying "it's a good plan but they don't know the details."

In conclusion I'll tell you my thoughts on Obama's health care plan once I know what the heck it is and not what everyone else (who apparently don't know either) thinks about it. In my opinion a lot of people have a good or bad opinion of Obama and base their opinion of his plan on that. I personally couldn't care less about how I think of Obama as a person. I want to know what he (and consequently the legislature since they appear to have totally bought into this stuff) plan on actually doing and base my opinion on that.

I suppose I could try reading the bill. It's only 1,017 pages long and written in something vaguely akin to psuedocode without the comments. Honestly, though, I'd rather re-read the book of Numbers in the King James Version of the Bible.

From what few summaries I can find it has a lot of decent ideas spread out between a metric TON of terrible ideas. For instance no company can sue the government for price-fixing, no judicial review is permitted against government monopoly (which the bill creates), the government sets doctor's wages, all private healthcare must be incorporated into the government system, all non-US citizens will be provided free health care, a government committee determines your treatments and benefits...the list goes on and on.

All this would be great if somehow the government had some sort of built-in abuse prevention. If it exists I don't see it in the bill. I like the freedom to make my own mistakes. Perhaps I don't believe their treatment is the best one (or perhaps my doctor doesn't). With this bill they have to do what the committee (which as far as I can tell isn't made up of doctors and even if it were they may not be specialists) decrees. Does anyone else find this a Bad Idea?

The real issue is, however, that my objections are based on summaries that I've had to look up online, not the bill itself (primarily because I can't read the darn thing). Someone else could look up their own propaganda (i.e. something other than the first thing that came up on Google) and "prove" that I don't know what the truth behind the bill is.

The fact is, however, that they don't know either. Their "interpretation" is just as valid as mine because the bill (for those of you who, like me, were masochistic enough to actually try to read it) is ridiculously difficult to read (unless I'm simply stupid, which is a distinct possibility) and makes this parentheses-laden mess of a paragraph a work of art by comparison.

Interviews with senators indicate they're confused as well. I feel somewhat uncomfortable with the fact we're talking about whether or not to pass or not pass a bill which hardly anyone truly understands. For those of you who deal with law or politics often you may understand (and have a fancy word for) "unintended consequences." Logically the more complex the bill the greater the margin for it to be used in ways the writers did not intend.

Here's a crazy idea. Why make one health care reform bill? Why not make several easier-to-understand ones so it's simpler to deal with and isolate problems? In programming this is called "modular" design and is greatly preferred to writing one gigantic block of code.

So, in conclusion before I ramble on anymore, what were my thoughts on his speech? Depends on what I was dreaming during it and my thoughts about all the stuff being said about it afterwords .

Jacquesne