There’s nothing quite as sad as the spectacle of people wearing teabags on their hats while demanding that their health and the health of their children and neighbors be sacrificed to the gods of insurance industry hellfire.
Tonight, President Barack Obama will speak to the nation, going over their teabagged heads to try and reach the last remnants of a sane America. Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Perry continues to steep his own teabag in the cracked cups of the witless. Try and make us healthier, Perry threatens, and Texas will secede from the Union. We are a self-reliant people, by God, so the Texas Republic’s new President Perry will propose, at market prices, pliers for the poor with toothaches and handsaws for diabetics with foot ulcers.
What Perry leaves out, among other things, is this: responsibility. We have a responsibility to ourselves and to one another. Law, order and the fragile social fabric depend upon responsibility. In recent years Republicans have tried to make selfishness a synonym for responsibility. It’s not.
Yes, Obama faces a tough challenge. The hypocritical, the hateful and the hazy-brained were outraged at his speech yesterday to the nation’s schoolchildren, in which he urged kids to work hard and stay in school. Somehow, they forget themselves. In Midland, for instance, those worried today about presidential indoctrination suspended classes and bussed students to at least three George W. Bush-related events. And where was Bush on September 11, 2001? In a school of course, reading to the kids. Arlington school administrators banned President Obama, but they’ll bus hundred of students to see Bush next week.
Why, a person might jump to the conclusion that the skin color of the president has something to do with this sudden fear of the office of President of the United States. The angry parents are, of course, showing real disrespect for the office. These same angry parents smashed and burned Dixie Chick CDs because the singers criticized Bush. And, if the multiple levels of hypocrisy aren’t clear enough, it should be noted that these situational ethicists are the ones who argue for moral absolutes.
Crazy as this is, heretofore unimagined heights of ignorance are reached by a people demanding they be kept sick. They argue, loudly, for premature death at the hands of insurance profiteers who deny coverage and benefits to millions of us, including those of us who pay their exorbitant salaries with our premiums.
The health care issue is not as complicated as the insurance industry wants us to believe. Reform advocates simply want us to be able to buy into Medicare – or something like it – early. This will make us healthier, more productive, and less contagious. With swine flu on the rise, this last thing is not inconsequential. When teabags give way to surgical masks at townhall meetings, maybe the point will sink in.
No one will be forced to abandon their private insurance plans. Power is returned to patients and doctors. Government does not dictate care. Everyone wins. And, we are able to say proudly that in America, we care about one another.
But Perry needs a platform, and the insurance industry that owns him wants to keep its power over our lives and our health. They concoct a grassdupes movement. It’s not very big, really, but it seems to fill the screens of the idiot-making, truth-defying TV news shows. The only things worse than a dupe are the dupes duped by virtual dupes.
So, we’ll watch tonight and see if Obama can clear the air a bit. Here are some things to keep in mind.
The insurance industry was never going to be mollified and was never going to compromise on health care reform. Neither were the elected officials they’ve bribed. Obama needs to remember the fable of the scorpion and the frog. The scorpion asks the frog for a ride across the river. The scorpion promises he won’t sting the frog. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog. Asked why, he answers, “I’m a scorpion. That’s my nature.”
Whatever Obama says won’t matter to Rick Perry, big insurance and or its grassdupes. Obama could put a family physician in every pot at no cost to taxpayers and the idiots will still reach up under their teabags, pull their hair and rend their garments. Obama should shave them himself and throw down the gauntlet for real reform.
Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton all tried to reform an American health care system held captive by the unscrupulous, even murderous, barons of big insurance. Texans might remember it was Johnson, one of our own, who made the most progress. He passed Medicare and Medicaid.
And, here’s a bet. Post-speech punditry will focus upon political gamesmanship and partisan maneuvering. Little will be said about your health, your children’s health or the health of your neighbors. Nothing will be said by the analysts about the moral imperative to care for one another, an omission that reveals the pundits’ own moral inadequacies. And, despite the fact that no American politician has been beaten because of a vote for Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, the pundits will go on and on about the political risks of health care reform. Since the insurance companies will need the politicians more after reform is passed than they do now — Medicare has been very good for the lobbyists, too – we will be left to wonder what the hell risks they are talking about.
Oh, Mr Smith, as an expat Texan who has lived in both the UK and France for many, many years I have finally come to the conclusion that there is something lacking in the DNA of many Americans: the ability to rationally think. Healthcare is, as you wonderfully said, about caring about not just ourselves but other Americans. For a nation that purports to adore our country (our soldiers, our way of life, etc) we don’t really want to “care” about anyone – the nature of true selfishness. I wish Obama would have started out making the case better…we “should” look after each other – it’s the Christian thing to do and yet most “Christians” seem to think only of themselves without realizing they are being sold a rotten policy: let’s keep the status quo and make fear the natural ally. What if we had not had Medicare and Medicaid? Our elderly folk today would be looked after how??? Also, the sheer economics of having a public plan is so overwhelming. Businesses are less and less likely to keep their insurance plans for employees as premiums continue to rise. Also, workers cannot move freely to other jobs in other states if they worry they may lose what insurance they already have! That is why the rest of the industrialized Western nations (all those Commie and Socialist nations like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan, UK, France, Sweden, etc) opted for a government healthcare plan for ALL their citizens! Come on Mr Obama, state the obvious and make the arguments logical and decent. Appeal to not only Americans’ logic but to their sense of what progress we could make. All that rah, rah about loving each other and how we are the best is beginning to look very weak.
Good morning, folks, and welcome to the Canyon. Thanks for your interest, and I think you’ll the place to your liking. We’re gonna moderate comments, and since we’re all busy with multiple responsibilities, not all of them in front of the screen, from time to time comments may take awhile to appear. Please be patient, and thanks for being here.
I read on Quorum this morning about your new blog. That you were ever once called a journalist is laughable. I hope you don’t believe people will take this blog seriously — you clearly have a penchant for going to extremes, exaggerating and insulting people who don’t see things the way you do. More of the same-ol’ same-ol’ liberal blogging.
Good luck — you’ll need it.
I could not agree more with the observations made by Mr. Smith. The most unfortunate thing about this reform debate is that President Obama did not expect and prepare for the “grassdupes” and the damage that they would do to the debate. Mr. Smith is right to acknowledge that the media focuses incessantly on the carnival and its actors and not on the facts and our moral imperative – and the media focus unfortunately feeds the beast and its myths. I believe if the Obama administration would have made it as simple as Mr. Smith stated which is to allow everyone to buy into medicare or similar system it would have deflated many of the myths and feramongers that have fed on the 3500+ page document the White House released before the debate began. I certainly hope that the Presidents speech tonight will re-focus the debate on our moral responsibility – and I hope he and his organization follow it up with the mobilization of the millions of supporters who stand behind him and his efforts! Because as both Mr. Smith and I are keenly aware the health care industry and the insurance industry will never compromise and will spend the billions they are making on those of us who can afford insurance to prevent access to those who currently do not have it or can not afford it – namely the sick who need it most but because of pre-existing condition clauses or exorbitant premiums cannot afford it.
Glenn,
Outstanding piece, of course. Expected nothing less. The points are well argued and the sadness is that they even have to be argued. Oh well. I’ll keep paying attention to Dog Canyon.
Jim
Cindy—squeal away, doll, if that’s all you have at your command.
I think you sum it up best that whole Republican philosophy is based on selfishness. Interestingly enough, the insurance companies have convinced to many that to protect insurance profits is to protect individual interest.
They got them votin’ agin themselves and thinkin’ they won.
Congratulations on a great launch.
Partisanship has gone mad. Our Governor’s participation in the harsh and destructive rhetoric is disappointing. I know he’s busy bullying university regents, but I’d like to see him spend some time on getting the state government to function better.
Cindy,
Aren’t you “the pot calling the kettle black!” Republicans and neo-cons (another name for racists) have continually disagreed with intelligent discussion on ANY issue brought up by this administration! To you I say “you clearly have a penchant for going to extremes, exaggerating and insulting people who don’t see things the way you do.” Sound familiar? Add fear-mongering to your unintelligible rantings.
I will have to say that as a WASP farm boy born in Ft. Worth, I have lived here a lifetime with hope that our DFW “small town gone metro” community would someday become educated or at least try to improve itself beyond the hate left over from the civil rights movement. But that is just not happening. Today after forced early retirement at the age of 57, quite frankly, I give up. I plan to soon leave changing Texas and the world to our youth, as I have been a miserable failure at it with my own political activism. It is time for me to head to one of our southern neighbors who provide health care out of pocket costs often cheaper than the 20% deductible of what is left of my separation package plan, which will soon be ending to make matters even worse.
Best of luck Texas, from a native Texan of the 50′s. The large percentage of you have served as the perfect example and guidance to me of exactly what I have never wanted to be, well at least those of you who follow the likes of Mr. Bush & Mr. Chenney, their philosophies or the latest rant on Fox News. Love and good luck to those who have not and my God be with you.
“…going to extremes, exaggerating and insulting people who don’t see things the way you do.”
Cindy, that sounds suspiciously like the tactics that are being used by opponents of the President and his programs.
this is a very very sad name-caller, hoping to whip up the troops to support a figurehead who has vastly lost his support…except the diehards who have NOTHING TO LOSE by shouting for health insurance, at all costs, as written in that dispicable document. Get real, stop wasting our time with ridiculous verbage that is hating and name calling. Where are the true individuals with brains? get off the bus, it’s going off the cliff………unless you just wanna lean back and die.
who is to blame or this pathetic field of candidates? don’t you get to be in the room with matt angle when you decide this crap? just checking.
Well now, since the GOP officeholders seem mired in self-absorbed confusion about what they want to be when they grow up, this is a odd question. We have the former Comptroller, the Mayor of Houston, an ambassador, a distinguished attorney and many others contemplating races. I’m happy with that. Oh, by the way, we don’t get in a room and pick candidates. We practice democracy.
Somewhere (was it a bar or a blog?) I postulated that a political movement gets crazier as its ideas become more irrelevant. To my eyes, that seems to be what’s going on in the health care debate.
The Republican/Insurance Conglomerate has made conflicting arguments, lying arguments and a bunch of other unclassifiable wildass arguments. The media, gawd bless ‘em, has enabled them for the most part. Journalists like to think of themselves as thorough, fair-minded professionals; the ones covering the health care debate are merely rubberneckers at a car wreck.
But the biggest sin is that the media — and to some extent the Administration – has let the Republican/Insurance Conglomerate get away with attacking Obama’s plan without offering their own. It’s chickensh*t.
The fact is, the Republican/Insurance Conglomerate has no health care plan, at least not one that anyone has shown a lick of interest in. They’re irrelevent, which is why they have no choice but to hurl crap at the wall and hope something sticks.
I hope our President calls them out on it tonight. I hope he delivers a high, hard one back at them and then lays out a clear mission that even those cowering weasels in Congress cannot ignore.
Good show, Glenn.
Damn good points you make, sir. Well put, too.
‘an ambassador, a distinguished attorney and many others contemplating races.’
Is this a reference to the bush guy? radnofsky? the cowboy clown? the drug addled stripper enthusiast deli owner? just checking. Lifelong D here Mr. Smith. Just very sad about what you and your friends seem to have put together for us.