On the rude arch that spanned the flood
In the April breeze their flag unfurled
Here the embattled farmer stood

Obama’s healthcare bill, the poisoned Kool-Aid now approved by the Senate, will not confer any of its supposed benefits on Americans until 2013. But they will find themselves chafing at its restrictions and paying its taxes immediately after the law takes effect. Then, they will see no gain, but plenty of pain, for the next three years.

While Obama has been at great pains to make a show of avoiding taxes on the middle class to pay for his healthcare changes, his proposed increase in Medicaid eligibility will have a huge impact on the 39 states whose income cutoffs for the program are below those required in the new federal legislation.

Joseph Stubbs, president of the American College of Physicians — the second largest doctors’ group in the country — confirms that “the supply of doctors just won’t be there” for the 30 million new patients Barack Obama wants to cover.

After more than a decade of public healthcare with mandatory coverage, so many Canadian doctors have left the practice and so many young people have entered other fields that Canada ranks 26th of 28 developed nations in its ratio of physicians to population. Once, Canada ranked among the leaders in the number of physicians — but that was before government healthcare drove doctors out of the practice in droves.

The more fiscal details of the healthcare bills emerge, the more appalling they seem. The Senate Finance Committee bill includes a broad provision taxing all manner of medical devices.

Will a young, healthy, childless individual or couple buy health insurance costing 7.5 percent of their income as required by Obama’s health legislation?

Among the $500 billion in Medicare cuts that will provide the bulk of the financing for Obama’s healthcare plan is a $160 billion to $180 billion cut in the Medicare Advantage program, which offers a range of benefits not available to beneficiaries under basic Medicare.

Now that the various health care plans are being reduced to print, the financial details are emerging and with them a fundamental conclusion is becoming evident: The Obama plan is a giant tax increase for much of the American people (not just the rich).

On Friday, Aug. 14, The New York Times ran a front-page story “rebutting” the “rumor” that Obama’s healthcare plan calls for the creation of “death panels” to decide when to pull the plug on sick patients. The rebuttal misses the fundamental truth of the death panel charge.

President Obama’s rhetoric last week summoned the memory of “1984,” George Orwell’s novel of a nightmarish future — where the slogan of the rulers is “War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.”

Obama’s healthcare proposal is, in effect, the repeal of the Medicare program as we know it. The elderly will go from being the group with the most access to free medical care to the one with the least access.

When all of America’s top health insurers and providers met at the White House last week and pledged to save $2 trillion over the next decade in health costs, they were pledging to sabotage our medical care. The blunt truth, which everybody agreed to keep quiet, is that the only way to reduce these costs is to ration health care, thereby destroying our system.

Despite Gen. Colin Powell’s advice that the Republican Party must move to the center, now is not the time for triangulation by the GOP. It is, rather, the time for the Party to stand firm and fast upon its principles and let this nation come around to its way of thinking, driven by horror at the consequences of Obama’s program.

This economic crisis is too useful for Obama to want it to end. When Rahm Emanuel — and later Hillary Clinton — spoke of never letting a good crisis “go to waste,” many people were shocked. But now Obama seems to embody the corollary: that the crisis should continue until he has thoroughly milked it to reshape American politics, society and the economy.

GM, now renamed Government Motors, has a new CEO: President Barack Obama.

By replacing the head of the company and demanding a restructuring of its board in return for further financial TARP aid, Obama has taken upon himself the responsibility for the future of the company.

It’s rare to criticize a politician for being all action and no talk, but that’s one of the big things that’s wrong with Obama’s battle against the economic crisis.

The central economic crisis of the next five years may not be the greed-induced worldwide depression in which we are now mired.

Now that Obama is the president, fasten your seat belts.

During his first year in office, and particularly during his first hundred days, we are about to witness the most prodigious output of legislation since 1981-2 (under Ronald Reagan), 1964-5 (under Lyndon Johnson), and 1933-36 (under Franklin Roosevelt).

2009-2010 will rank with 1913-1914, 1933-1936, 1964-1965 and 1981-1982 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives.

The ostensible purpose of the war in Gaza is for Israel to wipe out Hamas and eliminate its capacity to rain rockets down on its citizens. Both the dovish leaders in the current Israeli government — Prime Minister Olmert, Foreign Minister Livni, and Defense Minister Barak — and the international diplomatic community want to get rid of Hamas and leave the more moderate Palestinian Authority as the sole negotiating agent for the Palestinians. So the Israeli attacks have not received the kind of international condemnation and vitriol that they usually attract.

With the election of Obama, the United States has moved dramatically to the left in its foreign policy at just the time that Israel, which seems likely to return Bibi Netanyahu to office in early February, is moving to the right. A collision is almost inevitable.

It still is hard to believe but, if Hillary’s “confidantes” are to be trusted, Obama is about to appoint her secretary of state and she is about to accept.

If ever there was an election that was not worth winning, it was the contest of 2008. While it was hard-fought on both sides, had John McCain won, it might have spelled the end of the Republican Party. As it is, the party is well-situated to come back in 2010 and in 2012, if it learns the lessons of this year.