Buzz Blog

According to my lefty-talking-points memo, this week is all about responding to last week's insurance industry-sponsored anti-health-care disinformation campaign. ---

For those who hadn't noticed, the U.S. health-care system is a shambles^[1]. Accordingly, congressional Democrats won in a landslide last November on promises to end the war and to expand Medicare coverage to all U.S. citizens.

The promise of expanding Medicare to cover everybody now "survives" (if you can call it that) in the watered-down form of the "public option." It is our last and best hope for meaningful health-care reform in this generation.

However, if you listen to the teabaggers, the public option will:

1. Provide free MRIs for everybody in Mexico,
2. Make small businesses illegal,
3. Create a biological clone of Adolf Hitler, and
4. Send Grandma to a death camp. %uFFFD

Now, I don't know about you, but I really like the idea of enrolling in Medicare. Actually, I do know about you: A healthy majority of Americans do support such a plan--when it is presented clearly by confident leaders, as it was by Democrats during the 2008 campaign. (When the plan is presented in timid, confusing terms by wavering politicians, as it has been all year by flaky Democrats, voter confidence seems to taper off quite a bit.)

All the old people I've known have been very pleased with their government-sponsored health insurance with its reasonable payments; I never saw an old person agonizing over whether to put off surgery or a dental exam in favor of paying rent or heating bills. When old people have health complaints, they just schedule a doctor appointment like it's no big deal and then they go in and Git R Done. It's as American as Larry the Cable Guy^[2].

Unfortunately, Democrats are, as ever, reticent to wield the power that we voters placed squarely in their laps. They don't trust us; they remember what raving, right-wing fascists we Americans became from 2002 to 2005 and, fearing that we might revert to that state at any moment, they've been spending their energies trying to shore up bipartisan support from within the crumbling GOP--forgetting that the only rats who haven't left that sinking ship are wingnuts, end-of-the-world religious zealots and low-level corporate overlords who haven't yet received the memo; backstabbers all.

Still, I welcome the news from one right-wing alt-weekly (it endorsed McCain in 2008--how rare must they be?): It seems Democrats have at last woken up to the cold, hard truth that Republicans--even those who may genuinely care about America's health-care crisis--lust after political power so much that they are willing to sabotage the nation's best interests in order to achieve it. Remember, they had six solid years of unchallenged authority--during which they bankrupted the country, demolished the Bill of Rights and weakened America's defense by committing our troops to endless wars while cutting military budgets in favor of corporate tax-cuts and open-ended contracts with private mercenary firms.

During their six-year stint as supreme leaders, Republicans convinced themselves that they are entitled to a permanent majority--and are now doing everything they can to ensure that no reform effort that might reflect well on their supreme enemy, the Democratic Party, will ever succeed.

It is now time to take to the streets. Let's reassure those wavering, troubled Democrats that we've got their backs--we know how hard it is for them up there on Capitol Hill, but we have confidence in their ability to, for once in their lives, do the Right Thing.

It's time for courage! Pass the single-payer bill, GOP scare-tactics be damned.

If you do, we grateful voters will back you up in the next election. But, if you don't, we'll know once and for all that, Democrat or Republican, it makes no difference, since you're all in the insurance industry's pocket. %uFFFD


P.S. to Sens. Hatch and Bennett: It's not too late to get on the right side of history. You must know that the GOP has gone astray. If the Republican shenanigans of the past decade cause you any twinges of guilt or shame at all, now may be your last opportunity to redeem yourself and do something good for the country.



1. According to Merriam-Webster: shambles: a place of mass slaughter or bloodshed, a scene or a state of great destruction

2. Note: This is meant as a wingnut selling point, although I've never actually seen documentation proving that Larry the Cable Guy was born here instead of in, say, Ghana.