I am just repulsed by what is being pulled on the health care debate by the right wing, the blue dogs, and the health insurance lobby. There is so much spin, so many lies and pure bullshit propaganda, including red baiting and dog whistling, that I, and many other rational people, are just flabbergasted and getting very, very angry.
- How do you reason with people who believe that paying for end of life planning is the same as euthanasia? Who believe that "living wills" are all about "pulling the plug on Grandma"?
- How do you reason with people who don't even know that fascism is an inherently right wing, corporatist, anti-union ideology? Who engage in thuggish tactics and violence, but whine that they are being falsely labeled terrorists?
- How do you reason with people who believe that the president in not a natural born citizen, in spite of a legal Hawaiian birth certificate and two newspaper announcements of his birth in Hawaii? I don't even have that level of proof - I just have the same type of birth certificate (not a hospital certificate), and no newspaper articles!
- How do you reason with people who think that socialism is the same as communism, and that any government involvement in anything but the military is socialism? But yet they'd never give up their roads, fire departments, police departments, municipal sewers, water delivery or courts in which to sue people (or get sued by corporations, more likely.)
- How do you reason with people who say they oppose "big government", but are all for the massive "homeland security" bureaucracy? They don't bat an eyelash at corporate welfare to banks and defense contractors from the public coffers, but heaven forfend that taxpayer money should be used to keep taxpayers alive, healthy and able to pursue happiness!
- How do you reason with people who think that it's fantastic that a previous president authorized wiretaps and email snooping on all Americans, but scream bloody murder at the mistaken idea that the government is collecting email addresses of people who disagree with legislation under consideration?
- How do you reason with people on Medicare, something that the Reaganites vehemently opposed, who now rabidly oppose health care reform for the benefit of the rest of us?
- How do you get these people to understand that they are being gouged for prescriptions because their party won't let the government negotiate (a good free-market principal) on prescription drug prices for Medicare recipients? These people don't want the *government* to touch their *government* health care to save them money?
- How do you get through to folks who, when you tell them that millions of people are uninsured, and uninsurable, reply that most of those people are illegals, drug addicts, or irresponsible? Especially when the "source" they cite are right wing lie sheets and insurance company propaganda? When the people you personally know that are in that situation worked hard, then took care of their ailing family members, and are now to sick to work, but not able to get disability because they played caregiver for family for too long?
- How do you reason with people who whine that you're engaging in "class warfare" when you want to tax the rich more, but yet have themselves been making war on the middle and lower classes for the last thirty years by:
- increasing the tax burden on the middle class while giving breaks to the rich,
- eliminating funding for programs for affordable housing that keep people off the streets and able to get jobs,
- eliminating funding for vocational education
- union busting and exporting manufacturing jobs, thus keeping the working class desperate and sinking farther into poverty
- fighting tooth and nail against making the minimum wage once again a livable wage
- making more minor drug offenses into major crimes with mandatory sentences so that more and more people are imprisoned or can't get work because they're a "drug felon".
- restricting access to birth control, prenatal care and abortion for the poor by eliminating funding for family planning, harassing clinics, and shooting ob/gyn's who do abortions, so only those who can afford to travel can afford to rule their own bodies?
- How do you get through to people who, when you tell them that 79% of bankruptcies are due to health care, and that over half of those started with insurance and got "rescinded" or lost it because they couldn't work, say that those people were irresponsible and should "get a job with insurance"?
- How do you get the point across to people who, when you tell them that a lot of big companies like WalMart don't offer their part time employees insurance, just say "they should be willing to work full time jobs", despite the fact that WalMart deliberately won't bring their hours to full time so they can avoid paying benefits?
- How do you keep from screaming at people who act like their (or their spouse's) employer health insurance is great, they'll have it forever, and all anyone needs to do is get a job like theirs? Never mind that that insurance can get changed, they can get laid off, or in an accident that means they can't work, or sick with something nasty and get dropped/rescinded or denied - they have theirs (for now), so the rest of the nation can just suck it up and deal, better luck next time??
I'm sorry, but if these people are going to be that damned stupid, we even more desperately need to pass health reform with a single payer system, and make sure that it includes psychiatric, because a lot of these people are delusional! They are deathly afraid of a "nanny state", but then they turn around and act like irrational children playing with fire and gasoline!
Over 70% of the country wants national health care, and most of them prefer a single payer, no nonsense system. But the lunatic fringe gets all the press, and the health insurance and big pharma shills score the lobbying points. What we'll end up with is a crappy "mandate" by law to buy a toxic, overpriced, non-competitive and unfriendly insurance from the very companies that have brought us to this crisis!!
Seriously, President Obama and the Democratic Party, stop trying to be adult and "fair" - the right will not play along with bipartisan anything, except maybe bipartisan feeding at the lobbyists trough. We won. It's our damn turn to steer the ship of state.
In the 8 years of the Bush regime (and the "Contract
OnWith America' before that), they never had any interest in allowing any compromise or inclusion of the Democrats ideas - it was "my way or the highway'. They have spent the last 30 years tearing this country apart, often suborning centrist Democrats (Reagan Democrats = Republican light) into "compromises" that were really sell-outs.
I strongly suggest that "bipartisanship" come to mean "we listen, nod that we've heard, and then do things our way anyway". Seriously, I voted for Obama because I wanted my country back, I wanted the rule of reason and the people to kick corporate interests and religious hypocrisy out of the drivers seat. I am sick of the Republicans, their lies, their demagoguery, their imperialism, their jingoism, their bigotry, their racism, their hypocrisy, their baseless moralizing, their willingness to enslave us to corporate interests. I remember how their cronyism deregulated and fucked over California's energy market, and how the Republicans just tried to say the 'solution' was more deregulation! Yeah, it would solve their desire to get richer?
I will gladly pay more tax to be assured that the piratical leeches of the health insurance industry never again risk scuttling our nation, never again drive hardworking people into bankruptcy, poverty and death from denials, lifetime maximums, and rescisions.
I will rather pay my taxes to cover the indigent, the unemployed, the working poor, and even lazy bums rather than have them go to fund unnecessary wars and sweetheart deals with Lockheed, Halliburton, and Blackwater (or whatever they call themselves now).
I am angry, and apparently we have more ground work to do to reclaim our once caring, fair and proud nation from the cesspit of banana republic corporatism and thuggish, uncaring religious fanaticism. I waited, fuming, until we got smart enough to vote the jackals Bush and Cheney, and their party, out of the White House. I waited, hoping that the previously spineless Democrats in Congress would grow a pair and push back against the corporate blackmail and Republican lie machine.
We have the majority, but the limp-dick slaves of the corporatocracy are still selling us down the river.
I ask you, if your congressman/woman does not back health care reform with
at least the compromise of a strong public option (and preferably single payer), that you vote them out in the next primary. Don't put so-called conservatives/Republicans in, but don't support sell-outs, get new blood who will answer to the people.
The job is not done. We must render the neoconservative movement a sad footnote in history, a failed experiment in greed, imperialism and hypocrisy. We must wrest the moral compass of the nation out of the hands of the hate-filled religious fundamentalists and the corporate hypocrites who fund them.
I want my country back, damnit.
