We Could be Dancing: Doing the Public Option Hokey Pokey

You put your left vote in.
They take their right vote out.
You put your left vote in.
Then you really shout it out.
You do the Hokey Pokey with the Public Option clout.
That’s what it’s all about.

It would seem on the surface that in light of what transpired in Washington yesterday, by all rights Lefties should be thrilled. Majority Leader Harry Reid stated unequivocally that there will be a Public Option in any Health Care Reform Bill that comes out of the Senate…and we had previously been assured by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the Bill the House puts forward will also include a ‘robust’ Public Option.

So, to paraphrase Janis Joplin…now that we’re here, where are we?

Let’s start with Reid’s assertion that the Senate bill will feature a Public Option with an opt out…meaning individual states will be able to opt out of the program after a pre-determined period of time…say a year. No problem for people who want and need a Public Option and happen to live in a blue state…but potentially devastating news for those that have been counting on a Public Option and, when it comes to acquiring health insurance, have the misfortune of residing in a red state. So on balance…some good and some bad in the news department.

In any case when Reid went all in on the Public Option, not surprisingly he was assailed by the usual suspects on the right. What was surprising…perhaps even stunning…was that he was also questioned by some on the left. One pundit, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, went so far as to say that Reid had effectively thrown Maine’s Olympia Snowe, the lone Republican to vote with the Democrats to move a Senate Bill out of committee, under the bus for crying out loud!

Others say the only reason Reid came down on the side of a Public Option was because he was afraid he would lose the support of Democrats in his re-election bid in Nevada. Well duh! These are the same people who only the day before had been warning that if Reid didn’t support a Public Option, he would lose the support of Democrats in his re-election bid in Nevada! So now they’re criticizing him for doing what they warned him he’d better freaking do. Kind of gives you a headache, doesn’t it?

Then there are the reported whispers supposedly coming out of the White House…that the President actually prefers the trigger mechanism favored by Senator Snowe to the opt out plan Reid favors. Of course, those are just whispers. Nobody has actually heard Barack Obama say anything like that publicly…at least not yet.

Until we do…and until the Senate and the House produce their actual bills…let’s just chill. The fact is that no one knows for sure how all of this is going to flesh out. We won’t know unless and until a Health Care Reform Bill actually comes up for final debate… which looks probable now but is by no means a certifiable lock. So essentially, everyone’s getting all lathered up about something that doesn’t even exist…and how stupid is that?

Seriously Democrats, let’s leave it to the GOP to eat their own. One circus in town at a time is more than enough. And while we’re at it, let Snowe go back over to the dark side, and take Joe Lieberman with her. Who the hell cares? That butt hole dances the Hokey Pokey with two right feet anyway.

The Public Option is still alive in spite of them…but Washington bipartisanship is deader than Dick Cheney’s conscience.

And so it goes.


SC

Circling The Drain: Why the GOP is becoming the party of NO ONE

The blog we posted Tuesday apparently struck a nerve with some of our right-leaning friends. In spite of the poll numbers staring them in the face, they vehemently dispute the notion that the Grand Old Party could be well on its way to imploding.

But the reality is that that’s exactly what’s happening...and from this vantage point the reason is pretty obvious. As long as Republicans stand by and allow those with the least credibility…or those who are the most polarizing…to speak for them, the GOP death spiral will continue. They’re losing support at an alarming rate because…well, quite frankly, because almost nobody likes or trusts them any more. More specifically, almost nobody likes or trusts the people who have become the face of their party.

Consider the evidence!

Let’s start in the House of Representatives where John Boehner is arguably the most ineffective Minority Leader in the history of either party…so no one really pays any attention to him. Instead, the Republican House member we see and hear pontificating most often, and far too shrilly, is Michele Bachmann, a certifiable Minnesota loon.

Every time Bachmann opens her mouth…and it rarely seems to be closed these days… the extent of her lunacy is increasingly more obvious. Think indoctrination camps, death panels, birthers, wrist slitting, sex clinics in schools…she’s been front and center for all of them, either as the originator of the spuriousness or the one who gives voice and credence to it. And she’s emerged as the GOP standard bearer in the House.

It’s almost a mirror image in the Senate where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has perhaps even less public appeal than Boehner. McConnell makes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seem dynamic by comparison…and who would’ve thought that was even possible? So with increasing regularity, into that gaping Republican void steps Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Yikes! How’s that for a spokesperson? A bigoted, sexist, heartless, xenophobe…and that’s only what we know about him so far. If they ever begin peeling back some of the layers on this Jesse Helms wannabe, who the hell knows what they’ll find?

Let’s see! Just recently he voted against Democrat Al Franken’s amendment to withhold defense contracts from companies if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court…this on the heels of allegations by a former employee of Haliburton subsidiary KBR that she was gang raped and subsequently held captive in a storage trailer four days after reporting for work in Iraq.

Over the years Sessions has also been, either by vote or voice, against a ban on the use of torture during interrogation; against a reauthorization of the President’s Plan for World Aids Relief; in favor of the Helms Amendment that would ban HIV-positive patients from entering the country; in favor of the warrantless wiretapping program; and soooooo against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor that he actually insinuated during her ultimately successful confirmation hearing that she was a racist! What a Guy.

Then there’s former Vice President Dick Cheney, apparently now totally invested as the GOP front man on the public speaking circuit. And what he does best…what he has always done best…is demean and criticize from afar. Since January his primary target…hell, who are we kidding…his only target has been President Obama and his administration.

It seems Cheney doesn’t think the Obamas have cleaned up the ungodly mess they inherited following eight years of Bush-Cheney madness quickly enough for his liking. That apparently gives him license…always in front of friendly audiences of course…to, most recently, call the President weak on defense in reference to Afghanistan, and a ditherer with regards to his overall foreign policy. He routinely fires other volleys…Big Dick always has been good with a gun…about things like the mess our economy is in, rising unemployment, and Health Care Reform which, predictably, he is dead set against.

Then there’s the bloviators who hold forth daily on talk radio and television…primarily but not exclusively on Faux News… in unflinching support of the Republicans and vehemently opposed to everything that has anything to do with President Obama or the Democrats. Led by the likes of the obscene Rush Limbaugh, the absurd Glenn Beck, the offensive Bill O’Reilly, the pointless Sean Hannity, and the ludicrous Lou Dobbs (is it possible Dobbs is angling for a job at Faux so he can rejoin his old buddy Beck?), these screeching hate mongers have effectively become the GOP’s media arm.

So there you have it, in sum total the new public face of the Republican Party…or, perhaps more accurately, the public face of the new Republican Party. And to think there are actually people out there who wonder why the Grand Old Party is circling the drain.

Go figure!


SC