Rise of the Stupid People Party

And the So-called Health Care Debate

First off, welcome to my new blog. If you're reading, I'm surprised. I just started my first blog here, and I haven't even told anyone about it yet. So you're ahead of the curve.

Tonight I was talking about my frustration with the politics surrounding Health Care Reform 2009. After griping about the all-out war of the Insurance Companies and their minions (i.e. the Republican Party and some "Blue Dog" Democrats), Beth asked me, "Have politics always been this stupid?" Of course politics have always been stupid, but she has a good point in asking that question today. There was a time I remember not all that long ago when both sides could disagree but make somewhat coherent arguments in opposition to each other's views.

But more and more lately, the Republican "argument", if you even want to call it that, is just ballyhooing blatant, full-blown lies, with no care whatsoever that people can easily fact-check these things nowadays. For example Health Care: the Republican "reform" isn't a reform at all. They claim that they have their own health care reform, but when given the chance to provide a solution, they realized that they don't have one -- apparently our broken mess of a system is just fine.

On the House floor, dimwitted Republicans like Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) have the gall to denounce healthcare reform because she says it will put seniors in a position to be "put to death by their government", playing to somebody's paranoid fears, I guess. She and others are vocal that the Republican's "Healthcare Plan" is a better option to fix healthcare. But, what the Republicans are proposing, literally, is keeping health care as it is now. So how in hell is Health Care going to better itself, you ask? The suggestion is that the Insurance private sector will magically fix itself. Without government intervention or provocation, according to Republicans and the FRC, they will get "all people insured and lower overall costs."

Yeah, and Sarah Palin's retarded ass will lead us to a new Utopian Age mounted on her flying fucking unicorn.

Simply put, Republicans don't have an argument at all. I don't know why, but they just don't. So instead of getting together and creating solutions, the argument has made way to whatever right-wing (-nut) sound-byte sticks temporarily, no matter how ridiculous it is. e.g. Obama wasn't born in the US, Healthcare Reform will kill old people and promote abortions, Sonia Sotomayor and Obama are "reverse racists" (whatever the hell that is), Obama is going to take yer guns, Obama equals Socialism, "if we kill Health Care Reform, it will be Obama's Waterloo" (Jim "the douche" DeMint (R-SC)), and this stupidity goes on and on. And if those idiocies don't work, then they just oppose anything Obama supports, poling and voters be damned. William Buckley would be turning in his grave to see this type of crapola spew from every Republican's lips.

Even the most fundamental of Republican ideals are cherry-picked per issue anyway. For example, the currently broken health care system is costing us billions and is something, as is, that we can't afford -- our taxes cover everything the insurance companies do not as it is. Yet these "fiscally responsible" Republicans don't want any change! Oh, and of course they're only fiscally responsible when it's not giving their idiot monkey leader Bush whatever he wanted for 8 years. Or if they're spending just stoopid amounts of money on the military -- even defending the F-22 and other military spending that no one can justify and the military isn't even using.

And of course, the cherry-picking of ideals continues (also known as hypocrisy): The GOP is "pro-life" (who isn't pro-life anyway? ..as stupid of a misnomer as pro-abortion. They're really just anti-abortion) yet they support the death penalty. They're all for Christian Values, yet they support torture, let alone far less than Christian ways of life for themselves and in treating the poor. They're against any government run healthcare agency, but they'd never say Medicare was a mistake or that VA Hospitals should be closed. And just which is more Christ like: to make sure everyone has the right to healthcare, or let the private sector and the market figure this out for us, just like it has so far? (Maybe that's not fair -- if I mentioned Christians cherry-picking what they feel like following from the Bible, this paragraph could go on forever.) Hell, I heard a pro-life woman argue recently against stem cell research, saying that her daughter wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for In-vitro fertilization and other medical breakthroughs. But those advancements she mentioned were made through stem cell research. They want it both ways.

The age of intelligent dialogue died the day George Bush was sworn into office. But it's effect wasn't completely realized until people could hear something other than White House spin in the media for the first time in eight long years.

Obama's weakness isn't in wanting to change government for the better. It's in thinking that old-school corrupt politicians would give up their financial-incentive based grip on power for the betterment of their constituents. And it's also in thinking that you can rationalize with the irrational. There can never be bipartisanship so long as one side doesn't deal in facts, let alone busses its minority protesters around to local town hall meetings for the single purpose of "disrupting the health care dialogue" (thanks lobbyist Dick Armey, you asshole).

It was reported recently that Insurance Corporations are spending over $1.5 million dollars each day on lobbying Congress. And that figure was a snapshot of their lobbying practices before the Health Care Reform 2009 discussion even started. Imagine how many people could have healthcare (world-wide) if we pocketed the money spent on lobbyists in a single year. Oh but gee, where's the "value add" in that??

Speaking of Health Care, Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-New York) put an amendment on the House floor to kill Medicare. His intention was to force Republicans to "put up or shut up", allowing them to vote away Medicare -- a government run (and therefore must be evil) health care for seniors. Funny how not a single Republican bitching about how government can't possibly run a health care competitor voted to get rid of Medicare. Not one vote. Fucking Hypocrites.