The best medicine

Well, I certainly hope that everyone who considered voting for Ole Whitey McCain in 2008 is breathing a huge sigh of relief with accompanying exaggerated forehead-wiping gesture. Whew! What a dodged bullet that was, eh?

And if you’re not sure what I’m talking about, please to check out Grumpy’s reaction to his party being unable to stop the health care reform bill:

"There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year…they have poisoned the well in what they've done and how they've done it."

It goes on in typical McCain keep-away-from-my-Gran-Torino fashion.

In response, Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid released the following statement.

Reid of course makes an excellent point about the revelation of McCain's brazen hypocrisy on the ol' "Country First" front.  I guess country only comes first when it's a Republican country.  Democratic countries can go fuck themselves, apparently.

"For someone who campaigned on ‘Country First’ and claims to take great pride in bipartisanship, it’s absolutely bizarre for Senator McCain to tell the American people he is going to take his ball and go home until the next election."

But Reid also, and in typical Democratic leadership fashion, misses the bullseye on one crucial point: the Republicans can't take their ball and go home, because IT'S NOT THEIR FUCKING BALL.  So, they can go home if they want to, but no one's going to chase after them and beg them to come back, nor is the scoring going to cease in their absence.

Yeah, the ball belongs to the Dems, and if the Republicans want to play, they have to play according to the rules of the playground, the most important of which are these:


1. Stop fucking whining about the rules.
2. Cop to your own fouls, if you want a call to go your way.


If you don't follow 1 & 2, then no one will ever want to pick you again, no matter how good you are.

Ah, but just like every thickheaded jackass bully you ever met in your childhood, the Republicans just can't seem to figure out why everyone is laughing at them.  They can only rage and stomp their feet and shout words whose meanings they do not understand, and then become even more enraged when they discover that their demonstrations have only made people laugh even louder.

And I think laughter is a perfectly fine reaction to have to all this.  Yes, it's troubling to hear their bench yell "Nigger" and "Faggot," and yes, it's heartbreaking to see them treat a sick man with a disrepect you wouldn't show to an organ grinder's monkey, but in the end, their histrionics have become so telling that it's just sorta sad.

The best was when Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) said on the floor of the House, "If ObamaCare passes, that free insurance card that’s in people’s pockets is gonna be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the war between the states — the Great War of Yankee Aggression."

First of all, "free insurance card" is pretty funny.  Perhaps no one has ever hipped Broun to the fact that Congress is pretty much the only place where health insurance is still free. 

Secondly...The Great War of Yankee Agression.  You know, when the overly-agressive Yankee types tried to tell the Southern man what he could do with his own hard-earned darkies.

I told you it was sad.  Because they have no idea, no idea that we're onto them.  They think they're pretty clever, with all their talk of deficits, and future generations, and constitutionality, and interstate commerce, but really, it's all about the colored boy in their White House, giving away free health care to all his no-account jigaboo cousins.  It's all about health insurance welfare queens, my friends.  Because some people, and yes, they're mostly old white dudes, believe that every thing they have ever gotten they have earned, whereas every thing non-old white dudes have ever gotten has been handed to them, completely undeserved.  This is a necessary belief, if they are to continue to perpetuate a system that favors them, you understand.   They must believe it, in order for the planet they inhabit to remain in place, and not get knocked out of its orbit of presumption like some juiced-up Barry Bonds dinger.

So we may as well laugh at them, because there is certainly no talking to them.  How do you talk to someone who has free health care from the government, but doesn't think anyone else deserves it?  How do you talk to someone who believes that a seven hundred billion dollar mistake in the desert is a bargain, but that same amount spent on the health of our people is a scam of historic proportions?  How do you talk to someone who, when confronted with the tragedy of the thousands of people who die in this country every year due to lack of coverage, wants to quibble over how many thousand?

And in the end, we may as well laugh because this bill that they have demonized, does precious little to deserve its reputation.  It doesn't really help people who can not afford coverage at all.  It makes health care more expensive for many women.  Many of its most important reforms don't take place for years.  It's a step.  A very small step.  And very dearly paid for by those who fought for it, yes, but much more dearly paid for, of course, by those it disappoints.