In An Eggshell

So, like, hooray and stuff. The Democrats finally managed to pass a 'Health Care Reform' bill. It contains some necessary consumer protections, but in the end it is a giant boondoggle for the insurance companies...the last year has seen an incredible rise in the price of  healthcare stocks,  and that rise didn't stop because of the  'reform' bill. For much of last year, the passage of the bill was considered inevitable, yet the healthcare stocks kept surging- if the healthcare industry t feels threatened by this new system of conscription medicine they sure have a strange way of showing it.

I'm very disappointed (but not at all surprised) that  the 'public option' was eliminated altogether, but what can you expect when our 'fearless' leaders are cowed by the screaming of a small but very loud minority that hates 'socialism' despite having absolutely no fucking idea what it is that they hate.

I talked to a young woman today who divided her breath between two wildly dissonant ideas:

1) When a picture of the President appeared on TV, she expressed horror and dismay over "that man" and his health care reform plan. "We will all be eating dog food by 2012", she lamented, " socialism is eating this nation from the inside."
(Note: Normally,  people do not say things like "socialism is eating this nation from the inside" in the course of routine conversation. I strongly suspect that this is a "talking point" being distributed by rightist pundits; one meant to be  regurgitated by automated human recorders)

2) Threw a hissy-fit because the public school that her children attend is raising the amount of money that they charge for the kids laptops. She whined about how the schools seem to charge fees for everything now.

I was at work so I bit my tongue until I tasted blood. I really wanted to tell her that our public schools are 'socialism' and if she really cared about the quality of education, she wouldn't bitch about paying fees...it was a tiny sum compared to the cost of buying a computer, after all. I wanted to add that I found it ironic that she expected The Government to buy computers for her children but she recoiled in horror at the idea of the same government buying healthcare for someone else's children.

Furthermore, if we were truly a Christian Nation, we would already have public healthcare for all of our citizens.  It seems pretty obvious that Jesus would support the 'public option, He was into that liberal 'heal the sick' stuff, ya know?...I'm not sure how he'd feel about the bank bail-out (I must have missed the chapter where He washed the moneylender's feet)  and I'm pretty sure He would oppose our current wars- unless there is a missing Bible chapter where Jesus launches a pre-emptive strike so He doesn't have to turn His cheek.

What proverb says that "collateral damage" is acceptable?

It seems as if  today's aggressive American Christians support war, support giving money to the wealthy and are against giving aid to the needy. Are we living in a Bizarro Testament? I mean, if these so-called Christians had opposed the Iraq fiasco with the vehemence that they oppose healthcare reform, we'd be at peace now and we wouldn't be broke.

And using abortion as a reason to not give living children medical care? You would let living children die in order to protect zygotes and embryos? That's sick.

I am not a Christian but I hate war and don't mind if my taxes get used to feed kids or treat the sick. In fact, I want my taxes to feed kids and heal the sick. Some schools would be nice, some libraries, too. And there's always work to be done on our socialized Interstate Highways and infrastructure...hmmm, the highway system is so subversive that it is named after our first Socialist President, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Perhaps we should re-name it The Ronald Reagan Roadway and license it out to Exxon, who could charge drivers by the mile to travel their roads, as well as monopolizing the petrol trade theron ..it would cost the individual driver a huge sum of money to drive on the highway, but at least the Government could cut taxes.

That goes double for you, Grandma!